Strictly come dancing

At midday in the Israel Ballet's studio, five of the troupe's dancers stretch their lithe bodies on the light parquet floor. Opposite them sits Berta Yampolsky, the founder of the ballet, stern, straight-backed, her hair combed close to her skull.

"Look at that one," she hisses in a whisper, referring to one of the dancers who is lifting her long legs. "I'm personally grooming her. Everyone tells me she's a klutz, the other dancers want to break her legs. But I tell her: 'Listen to me. Only to me. You're great. If they clap their hands after you do your solo, you'll know that you were bad. If they remain silent and step aside you can be sure you were wonderful. 'They are crazy with envy."

Are your dancers so wicked?

"The envy in ballet is terrible. It affects their health. Sometimes I think they're about to murder one another because of a role. The men are able to restrain themselves, but for the women, it destroys their lives. They incite, form cliques. Women in general are witches."

This week Yampolsky and her husband, Hillel Markman, are celebrating 40 years of activity of the Israel Ballet troupe, which they established. The debut performance of the ballet took place at the Rina cinema in Holon on January 25, 1967, and since then Yampolsky and Markman have raised generations of excellent dancers, who are all quarrelsome to some degree. Thanks to the two of them, Israel has professional classical ballet that preserves a 19th-century repertoire, alongside contemporary dances created by Yampolsky.

In spite of this tremendous achievement, things are difficult for Berta. Very difficult. Even totally innocent questions, such as 'Where's the sugar?' and 'How are you today?' elicit a flow of complaints from her. Managing a troupe of about 35 dancers is an exhausting task, she says.

"A dancer is the most exploitative, the most spoiled, the most egotistical type of person, and if you don't keep him on a short leash he'll grab you by the neck. Dancers think only about themselves. Never ask a dancer how he feels. Something always hurts him, he's always bitter, he's never happy. They work very hard, in the most demanding profession, and they miss out on a great part of life."

What, for example?

"Even making love. They're young, bursting with hormones, and when they make love all night they come to me to rehearsals and they can't move. More than once I tell them 'Not too much lovemaking tonight,' as though in jest, but actually in all seriousness."

Afterwards she admits that in this case, but only in this case, they don't listen to her. "Because they're closed into the company of the troupe, involved with one other, everything happens here. Marriages, separations, stealing partners. And when we travel abroad - oho - at night I don't know who's sleeping in whose room."

The sex habits of the dancers are not the problem. During all the years of its existence, Yampolsky, Markman and their troupe have been dealing with the cultural establishment's limited support and lack of interest in the classical art. "They've always looked at us as a pair of crazies who are preoccupied with something anachronistic," says Yampolsky angrily. "We've been marching alone all the way. Countless times over the years we have found ourselves simply begging for money. We have survived thanks to our audience and thanks to the fact that we believed that the next month would be better. Money arrives late and we have no way of paying the dancers' salaries. Hillel and I wake up in the middle of the night and start wandering around the house worrying about how we'll pay our people."

Markman joins the conversation. "We were sure that as we developed and progressed, the State of Israel would admire us and would support a classical ballet troupe that was established ex nihilo," he says. "Unfortunately, even today, with the exception of the audience in Israel and abroad, nobody believes in the Israel Ballet. Year after year, we accumulate deficits. Up until two years ago, we would be thrown from one gym to another. As though someone had decided that the noose would tighten until we hanged ourselves."

Yampolsky: "In Israel they exalt only modern dance. Ohad Naharin is considered a god here. I have no doubt that Israeli modern dancers are better than anywhere else in the world. We are the modern Mecca, because this field has always been nurtured. Modern is the Israeli character. Our men are macho, hunks, they have power, and that's good for modern dance. The Israelis are vulgar, outspoken and impolite, and that's why modern suits us. They don't want to be prettified with classical."

The annual budget the troupe receives from the Ministry of Culture is NIS 3.9 million. The troupe's deficit has increased almost to the dimensions of the budget. For the sake of comparison, the budget of the Batsheva Dance Company is NIS 5.5 million, not including (generous) donations, and the Kibbutz Dance Company gets NIS 4.7 million.

Of the three large dance troupes in Israel, the Israel Ballet receives the lowest budget, in spite of the fact that its expenses are far greater - from toe shoes for the female dancers, which cost NIS 500 and must be replaced every few months, to the scenery for classical productions, which also require dozens of dancers in each cast.

Accordingly, the dancers earn pathetic salaries - NIS 4,000 for six days of work each week and sometimes even seven, depending on the number of performances. A veteran and popular soloist who has reached the pinnacle, and for whom dance is his entire life, will earn between NIS 5,000 and NIS 7,000, if he bargains.

"For example, there's no such thing as money for living expenses," remarks Yampolsky. "And I see how, when we travel to performances, the dancers think twice before buying themselves something to drink at a kiosk."

That's sad.

"It's not so terrible. When I was their age and in their situation I thought very little about food. I would buy a skirt for a dollar and a shirt for a dollar and look like a million dollars. That's an advantage of young people that they should take advantage of. Look, I never in my life bargained over my salary. My dancers bargain - and how. They have also learned the trick of a doctor's note. I tell them: 'Don't do that. A doctor's note is no big deal, any doctor will give you one.' That way they can rest at home for two weeks and have fun."

Maybe they're really sick?

"It's hard for me to allow that. I don't have enough dancers."

Her entire world

These tough expectations, which will be explained in detail, could be seen as unreasonable, if not actually cruel, on Yampolsky's part, but that is how she has been running her own life for decades, since she was 14, the age when she began to dance.

She was born in Paris, where her Russian-born parents, an engineer and a doctor, met, and she has a sister who is five years her senior. "We came to Israel when I was 2 years old, and we lived in poor conditions. We lived in a store on Shabazi Street in Tel Aviv. But my parents never complained about a difficult financial situation. We ate little and we didn't complain that we lacked food."

After several years the family moved to Haifa. Because Yampolsky suffered from a problem of "crooked and sloping shoulders," as she puts it, her mother thought that dancing would straighten her up and she registered for studies with Valentina Archipova, the Haifa ballet teacher in the 1950s. Her life changed forever.

"From the first lesson, it became my entire world, and I knew what I would do with my life. Before that I would always walk around with the feeling that my life was empty. From that moment, I felt sorry for anyone who didn't dance. I had several girlfriends, but I no longer belonged, they no longer interested me."

She danced three times a week, "and the rest of the time I would wait for the lessons, pass the studio and look at the closed door. The studio became my temple. A broken-down bomb shelter that was always damp turned into the place I loved most in the world. I used to come an hour before the lesson and wait for Archipova. When I saw her approaching with firm steps I would get so excited, and she would pass me by without saying hello.

"I didn't expect her to pay attention to me, and like a little puppy I used to follow her, enjoying her smell, although it was the smell of cigarettes. When the lesson was over I would sit and watch the other lessons. I had great admiration for Archipova. The greatest honor was to clean the studio for her free of charge. I was happy. Those were the only things that mattered to me."

Nothing else?

"I wasn't a good student, and I hated going to school. The teachers didn't like me and I didn't like them. Aside from that, I was closed within myself, troubled. I didn't find myself in my environment, with my friends. I had nobody to talk to and there was nobody to ask me, 'Berta, how are you, how are you feeling?' My mother didn't talk much. I know almost nothing about her. Before going to sleep, I would ask her to tell me a story so she would read me some of Krylov's parables."

Did your parents accept your new love?

"My father was not at all pleased. For him, a dancer was like a prostitute. When my mother understood that this was really what I wanted to do, she gave me her blessing. Sometimes my father forbade me to go to dance and she would convince him to let me. Look, ballet gave me my life. Ballet and Hillel were and still are the only sources of happiness in my life."

She met Markman when she was 16. During his military service in the Israel Navy, he also decided to take ballet lessons with Archipova. "He used to admire my long legs," she says, hiding an embarrassed smile. "They always said that I had very nice legs and called me 'the sexy one.' Hillel used to take me home after the lessons on his motorcycle. We had a love that I think is very unusual. A nice and refined love, without groping. I had several suitors, but Hillel was different from all of them, and also very handsome. He has always been the one who strengthened me, directed me, supported me, and in effect he is also the one who really taught me how to dance."

She married him at the age of 18, in the shack of a rabbi in Bat Galim, "without anyone knowing except our parents and our sisters." That, incidentally, is the latest point in her biography where she is willing to mention her age. After that, the details are blurred, and Yampolsky, with admirable cunning, refuses to give hints as to her age. On the other hand, she is very happy to reveal her weight: 54 kilograms.

A new center

After their marriage, the two traveled to London and studied ballet at various schools, including that of the Royal Ballet. Later, they danced in Paris, with the Opera Ballet of Antwerp, and in Switzerland and New York as well.

"We could have had a very good life in the United States, and people would have heard about us all over the world, had we done even half of what we do in Israel, but we decided to return to Israel. I'm very Zionistic and patriotic."

At the beginning of their career, they performed together with the Israel Opera, alongside Placido Domingo, among others, and in 1967 they established the troupe that was then called the Classical Ballet. The troupe's first performances, which included Yampolsky, Markman and about four other dancers, were held at the Rina theater in Holon. Their activity was funded by giving ballet lessons all over the country.

The first significant achievement of the troupe came in 1975, when Georges Balanchine, one of the great neoclassical choreographers, allowed them to perform some of his works, including "Serenade," "Symphony in C" and "The Four Temperaments," free of charge. In 1978, Yampolsky began to choreograph for lack of choice, after choreographer Hans Shperling canceled his work with the troupe at the last moment. Since then she has created and reconstructed about 30 ballets, all of them classical and neoclassical. Only two years ago, after a great deal of wandering, did the troupe receive its own center, in the "old north" of Tel Aviv. The cost of the impressive center was $1,200,000 and most of the sum came from private donors, including Shari Arison.

Since the new center was built, Yampolsky "kisses the walls and strokes the marble," she says. At the end of every work day she walks through the building and collects items that the dancers have left behind or forgotten; anyone who wants his possessions back is fined NIS 3 per item. But that is only one of her modest battles. Her major battle is against the weight of the dancers.

Kilograms of humiliation

On her way out of the spacious hall after another morning rehearsal, she passes a tiny dancer who is secretly eating her lunch. Yampolsky identifies pasta shells covered with oil in the plastic container, and in response makes a face. Closing the door, she is furious at the difficult sight. "I have a weight problem here," she fumes. "There are heavy girls in the troupe, and I reprimand them all the time. A classical ballerina must be fragile, pretty and aesthetic, period. They first of all have to look good, and then to dance well. It insults the dance to see someone fat on stage. In winter weather I come home and immediately want to eat. I know exactly what it's like, but I often go to bed hungry. Maybe I'll take a rice cracker. They won't go to bed hungry. They don't have my discipline. They say: 'I'll burn it off tomorrow.' If they had my discipline, they would go far. I eat wisely" (cereal cooked in water, salad, fish, 10 nuts, three fruits and two cubes of bitter chocolate every day).

How do you deal with this weight problem which, to tell the truth, is very hard to see?

"I call them aside, speak to them, ask: 'Tell me, when will you lose weight?' I can also slap them and say: 'You're fat!' Usually I take away the roles from someone who has gained weight, give them to someone else, and tell her: 'Until you lose weight you won't dance them.' I have also fired some dancers who didn't lose weight. It bothers me very much. By the way, my male dancers have to be just as careful. When they gain weight, it's more disgusting than in the women. I tell them exactly what to eat. Meat, salad, yoghurt, two slices of bread a day, and they can eat some chocolate for energy."

Isn't it dangerous? Over the years, you have had dancers in the troupe who suffered from anorexia and bulimia.

"That's true, and I definitely don't want anorexic women, skin and bones. I'm asking for very reasonable things; I recently fired an anorexic dancer whom we told for months that she had to gain weight."

"It's a matter of a kilo or two," says Wendy Lucking, the director of rehearsals and former soloist of the troupe, who has been working with Yampolsky for 25 years. "Berta is much softer than she used to be, and still she goes straight for the jugular: 'You look like an elephant.' All you can do is go into a corner and cry. It's black or white, either you're fat or you're thin. Just as one small mistake by a dancer and Berta says that she ruined the whole performance. It's part of the classical tradition."

Isn't it a terrible humiliation?

"During the periods when I gained weight, I felt that I no longer existed as far as she was concerned. If someone gains weight, she simply stops using her. She's put on a back burner. It's a very cruel and shallow world. We say that we're artists and all, but 'It's all about how we look.'"

The price of betrayal

During all her years of activity, Yampolsky has been saddled with a negative image, and is portrayed as an inaccessible and unpleasant woman. It's not that she lacks a soft, caressing and empathetic side; she simply hides it. She is aware of the damage. "My image is terrible. It is affected by my name, and I have a terrible name, that of a fat Polish woman. Anyone who hears my name expects me to have a galut [exile] mentality and to be old-fashioned. That Berta Yampolsky blocked my entire access to the media."

Are you an unpleasant woman?

"In my job, I can't be nice to everyone, and maybe it's a good thing that people don't know I have a soft side. I can't please everyone, and there's no shortage of occasions when I'm harsh and outspoken. When my dancers work as they should, I say 'Nice, great'; when they don't, I have no mercy. Maybe it's my wicked side, but it drives me crazy. If I see a performance and suddenly they all look fat to me, I can't help going backstage and shouting at them: 'You're all as fat as cows.'"

One of the points at which Yampolsky's difficult nature is revealed is when dancers decide to leave the troupe. "Anyone who tries to leave the profession or, God forbid, to travel abroad to look for work knows in advance that the chances that Berta will ever speak to him again are slim," says a female dancer who experienced that herself. "Berta sees it as a serious and unforgivable betrayal."

"Look, I'm a person who really likes to give, it makes me happy, but I'm afraid of betrayal," explains Yampolsky. "I want the dancers to have the decency to admit that they received everything from me. After all, I can take any dancer with talent and turn him into a star. Every day I work with a few young girls and train them for the troupe. Build them up. Give them my all, and it makes no difference whether I'm tired or hungry. And in spite of all my giving, they turned their back on me."

She remembers all of them. "There was a girl with whom I worked for years, from the age of 14, and then full of chutzpah and venom, she turned against me. She incited the dancers against the person who had been like a mother to her. There was a dancer who for years slept, ate and showered in my house. She would go with me to the supermarket after rehearsals and I would buy her whatever she wanted. One day I approached the dressing rooms and heard her talking about me with the dancers in a very unpleasant way. Mocking me. I told her that it would take a long time until I forgave her, but I would never forget. Two days later she flew to Paris. A flight she had planned in advance, without telling me, without saying thank you to Berta. So that was that, I turned the guest room that had been used by many dancers into a room for Pinchy (the small, very old dog that Yampolsky and Markman take everywhere). Hillel opened my eyes. I will never let a dancer into my house, because I'm naive, and in the end they hurt me."

Recently Yampolsky abandoned her protegee Roni Aflalo, who was the soloist in her work "Written in Sand," in which she is raped on the beach. Aflalo, says Yampolsky, was her muse in recent years, and nevertheless she preferred to audition for the second season of the television reality show "Born to Dance."

During the first stages she was very popular, as expected, but a moment before the finalists were chosen she was injured, and this week she will undergo a complex operation on her knees.

Yampolsky: "I told her that she was making a mistake. After all, it's only publicity, in order to get into the gossip columns. Here Roni was a star. She already had an operation on one knee, and I warned her that something bad would happen. Hillel actually anticipated that she wouldn't return to us because she would be injured. I'm very sorry about it. This was a dancer with whom I wanted to do everything."

Aflalo, 24, danced for six years with Yampolsky. Her injury, she emphasizes, actually happened during a rehearsal with the Israel Ballet.

"After a year of deliberation, I applied for 'Born to Dance' because television interests me and I wanted to experience it. In retrospect, I feel that God saved me from this show, because it isn't up to my level of dancing. It's better for me to perform the solo 'Written in Sand' that Berta created for me.

Will you be able to go back to dancing?

"Berta wants me to come back to the company. We have a special connection. She is very sensitive to me, and I love and admire her. God willing, if the surgery and the long rehabilitation period are successful, I'll go back to dancing, but in a slightly different way. It won't be simple with 10 screws in my knees."

It may come as a surprise, but Yampolsky does not condemn "Born to Dance." She says, "People on the show refer to classical ballet without having the shadow of an idea of what it is. It's also odd to me that they made Ido Tadmor into the authority on dance. Ido is a lovely guy, handsome, well spoken, but the level of his achievement speaks for itself. And the chairman of the jury is even worse. Nevertheless, I watch the show. It has rhythm and energy, which TV viewers love."

Do you watch modern dance performances? Are you up to date with what is happening today?

"I have no time. My path in life is between the house and the studio and back."

Without deviating?

"I have no room in life for hobbies, free time or friends. I'm totally inside ballet and I accept that. I love to read, and that's why I don't go near books. If I start to read it will arouse my curiosity to continue and will divert my thoughts to something that is not related to ballet, and then I'll have terrible guilt feelings. Nor do we go to the movies, although I really like it. The last film I saw was 18 years ago. I watch documentaries on television."

Is that also the reason why you don't have children?

"I'm very, very sorry that we don't have children. Hillel and I could have been great parents. My children would have been smothered with love; I love children so much. But we decided that ballet is our lives. We don't know how to do half a job. As I know myself, I wouldn't have had enough time to devote to the children. My mother used to accuse me and my sister that because of us she couldn't work, because one day my sister was sick and one day I was sick and that drove her crazy. I was afraid that I would reach such a state and I decided that I would go with ballet all the way."

And what about Hillel?

"Hillel did what I said. I have the best husband in the world. Children are love and happiness, but children are also very difficult. The moment you have children you've finished with your life. You're no longer worth anything. Everything revolves around the children. It's impossible to divide your life between art and children. A child is not a dog. We had a problem with the Israeli dancers who became mothers. Suddenly she has to leave early, her child is sick, she has fever. That's impossible. With the Russian dancers it's easier because the babushkas help there and they are strict about limits and discipline."

Weren't you ever tempted to have a child?

"In my youth I made sure not to become pregnant and we didn't discuss it at all. At some point we thought about it a little, and my doctor recommended that we go abroad for half a year to relax, and then I would succeed in becoming pregnant. Of course for me it was impossible to leave the troupe for such a long time. There was no question here that ballet came first. Always."

"Because we started to dance relatively late," explains Markman, "had we decided to bring children into the world that would have forced us to stop our career and we couldn't do that. Anyone can be a mother, but not everyone can be a ballerina, and I, as opposed to Berta, am not sorry that we have no children. Even raising dogs is a difficult task."

Berta says that it was she who reached the decision and that you supported her.

"I always carried out Berta's wishes. She is the dreamer and the initiator, I'm the implementer and the protector. There's no one like Berta. She's a national asset." W