Water Flowing Together is the name of the Navajo tribe to which Jock Soto, the celebrated former principal dancer of the New York City Ballet, belongs, through his Native American mother. It is also the name of an informative and moving biographical film directed by Gwendolen Cates, which will have its New York premiere at Lincoln Center’s New York State Theater, January 7 at 6:30. (Subsequent local screenings will be given January 11 and 18, at Lincoln Center’s art-movie house, the Walter Reade Theater. On April 8, it will be telecast nationally on PBS.)
The film is disarming. Instead of being the sleek documentary you might expect these days, it has a vein of inexperience in the genre—you’re not always sure of who’s who, where you are, and what ballet’s being danced (often the choreography isn’t even matched to its own music)—that draws you into a singular world of facts and feelings in the Soto story. There’s an honesty about it that is both innocent and powerful. Its cumulative portrait of Soto’s parents alone—the most accepting and supportive pair any child could wish—is piercing in its empathy, yet never sentimental. Like Dan Geller and Dana Goldfine’s 2005 Ballets Russes, this film is fueled by simple truths about what is to be human. Water Flowing Together traces Soto’s life story from his origins to his retirement from the stage in 2005 at the age of 40. (Cleverly, between the closing credits, it includes spots on his subsequent studying his second love, the culinary art.)
This is the history it relates: Soto was born in Gallup, New Mexico, in 1965 and raised in Tucson, Arizona. At five, the boy was mesmerized by a ballet segment on "Toast of the Town"—the memorable television variety show hosted by Ed Sullivan—and told his mom that that was what he wanted to do. She found a school for him in Phoenix; it was the only one in town, located in a strip mall. He became the lone boy in class. Recognizing his extraordinary talent, his teachers eventually encouraged him to continue his training in New York.
At 12, he auditioned for the School of American Ballet, the City Ballet’s illustrious academy, and was awarded a full scholarship, though one dissenting examiner felt his blocky body was not suited to classical dancing. He did his academic work via correspondence and quit midway through seventh grade. By the age of 14, living on next to nothing, he spent all his time dancing and, night after night in season, watching the City Ballet perform. When he left home for an urban life in the arts, he left much of his ethnic identity behind him for a time. (His father is Puerto Rican, but the family, with limited income and living on a reservation, could manage only rare visits to his father’s faraway people.)
Jock Soto in rehearsal for Peter Martins's The Magic Flute circa 1981. Photo by Steven Caras.
When Soto was only 16, George Balanchine took him into the company, where Peter Martins frequently choreographed on him, inspired by the young man’s capabilities. Soon he was given his first solo roles in Balanchine’s ballets. Then Jerome Robbins featured him. In the course of his career, Soto became one of the most choreographed-on dancers in the company. Lauded for his partnering as well, he formed memorable duos first with Heather Watts, later with Wendy Whelan.
Inevitably, in the course of a quarter-century, the pressure of a dancer’s life on body and soul took its toll. Soto became all too well acquainted with pain, exhaustion, and an existence isolated from the rest of the world in service of the undeniable ecstasy of dancing. The film chronicles his leaving the stage with an admirable combination of truth and tenderness.
My favorite passages: Soto’s parents dancing the merengue in their kitchen. Soto’s weeping from emotion and physical pain—and, most poignant, stoically attempting to compose himself—just before his farewell performance. The panoramas of the magnificent Western landscape and New York City’s streets. You will have your own.
Jock Soto may have left the stage, but he declares in Water Flowing Together, "I will continue teaching at the School of American Ballet until I’m 104." Last season, following my instincts, I watched him in his role as instructor. Here’s my account.
Dressed in black, New York-casual style—hoodie, sweats, and sneax—Soto enters the studio in which his partnering-class pupils are assembled. A gaggle of teenagers from SAB’s intermediate and junior-advanced classes, the kids have their sights set on joining the New York City Ballet, Soto’s home for so long. His arrival is soundless and without fanfare, like the appearance of a benevolent shadow.
Without a word, Soto extends his hand with a cavalier’s formal grace to a petite blonde nymphet and gently leads her into a flowing stream of tiny steps on pointe. He then guides her through the opening phrases of an adagio, partnering her and telling her what steps she should do at the same time. After that introduction to classical ballet’s take on boy-meets-girl, he has the boys doing pushups—they’ll have to hoist their stage sweethearts and that takes upper-body strength—to some sprightly jazz.
Then, with the boys striding backward, leading their forward-facing ladies, Soto cautions, "Boys, don’t panic; just walk her in." That accomplished, he asks for more, much more: "Girls, I have to see something happen. Boys, I have to be able to read your back."
In his dancing days, Soto was a consummate partner, probably a born one. From the very start of his City Ballet career, which I witnessed, he was a pillar of strength to the young woman lucky enough to be assigned to his care. This strength wasn’t merely a matter of muscle-power, but rather an instinct for the crucial elements of what, how much, and when. Vis à vis his ballerina, he managed to exude that rare combination of authority and exquisite manners, the latter appearing to be evidence of a genuine respect and love for the female of the species.
Jock Soto and Wendy Whelan in George Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements. Photo by Paul Kolnik.
Now, transmitting his knowledge to the rising generation, Soto is gently spoken and unflappably polite in his instructions, yet always explicit—about precisely what to do and how (expressively) to do it. No detail is too tiny. A boy grasping a girl’s extended arm must allow only his thumb and two middle fingers to touch her. The other fingers must stretch out into the air, he explains, to create an illusion of lightness.
Classical ballet being the last bastion of chivalry in our disheveled era, Soto works continually to encourage a worshipful attitude in the gentlemen toward their ladies. He insists that the boys conceal the mechanics of getting a girl airborne or suspended in a balance impossible without his aid—to encourage the impression of the female’s near-divinity.
"Boys," he exhorts, "you have to be kind to your girl. When she’s on one foot, on her toes, it’s your responsibility to hold her up. Never drag her. Never manhandle her. And if things get messed up," he adds, laughing, "remember the first rule I taught you about partnering—Never Blame the Girl!"
When a couple finishes a sequence and heads for an exit into the studio’s imaginary wings, Soto reminds the gentlemen, "Take her away." Cavaliering is, among other things—such as weight lifting, a balancing act, creating a mood of reverence—an escort service. At the conclusion of a pas de deux, the lady does not leave the stage unattended. Soto also wryly offers the guys a tip from his vast stage experience: "You should never be in line with the ballerina, boys, but a little behind her." "Trust me," he adds, in a tone that evokes the wrath of a diva who feels she’s been disrespected.
Interleaved with these periodic admonitions to the men are plenty of gender-specific instructions to the young women, in which Soto, typically, erases the boundary between technique and attitude. Early on: "Girls, listen, please. Do you know how important just walking is? It should look like you’re stepping on eggshells." Later: "Don’t ever look in the mirror when you’re practicing a duet. Look at your partner. Tell him you love him. Mean it." As the class reaches its climax: "It has to look nice. When your partner lifts you high in the air, you should enjoy it. Look up! Not just with your eyes; with your whole head. Throw flowers. Do something.”
Without words, he hoists one of the girls—a bantam-weight, granted—to his shoulder, where she sits, elegantly poised in the air while he walks forward, as if on a stroll in the park. Then he lowers her slowly, seemingly handling a fragile, otherworldly creature, until her feet touch the earth. Continuing, still in silence, he demonstrates a brief, beautiful phrase with her, then summons the rest of the students to take it up, traveling down the diagonal two by two. Every girl becomes a princess in her own imaginary kingdom, thanks to her trusty, Soto-bred cavalier.
Soto seems to exist in a capsule of calm, and that atmosphere communicates itself to the students. When the young people begin to chatter softly among themselves while he thinks out a phrase of the choreography he’ll teach them next, it’s a low, firm "Quiet, please." Some ten minutes later, when another wave of low chatter bubbles up, one of the students shushes the others. Whatever discipline or challenges Soto imposes, his pupils retain their natural ebullience and good humor, yet they’re paying sharp attention. There is every opportunity for a great deal of learning in this class, and it seems as if everyone in the room is taking advantage of it. After several takes of a difficult duet sequence, Soto acknowledges this, pointedly: "Now that we’re doing it for the last time, don’t use the mirror. Use your head."
Film still of Jock Soto and his mother, Josephine Towne Soto, doing a Native American dance together on the Navajo reservation from the film Water Flowing Together by Gwendolen Cates.
Soto lets the demanding session wind down with humor. Miming impassioned love, as in the nineteenth-century classics, he brings his hands together and draws them to his chest: "You have to grab the air and draw it to your heart," he explains. His neophyte heroes and heroines don’t manage such doings convincingly enough for him, so he takes over the ballerina role himself and sits on his young prince’s knee, exaggerating the ardent Byronic style to the point of ribald transgender absurdity. The students’ muted giggling suggests that they’ve relaxed enough to absorb the decidedly uncool manner of expression so foreign to their generation yet so necessary to their arsenal as performers.
When a group’s spacing grows raggedy, Soto, switching to his ironic vein, offers a bit of sound career advice: "You have to keep your place in the pattern. Why? Because you never enter a company as a principal, except in the movies."
Class finishes with the boys lifting the girls straight up high, their feet straight down—elevator style. Each guy, to the best of his ability, which is fairly sensational, makes the dead weight look like a small packet of feathers. As a coda, the sexes part ways and the girls do échappés, their feet springing out onto pointe like diamond needles. The boys, bellies to the floor, perform yet another round of pushups.
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