VERO BEACH —Of the professional dancers taking the Riverside stage tonight in the inaugural benefit for Ballet Vero Beach, one dancer has the most to do with the new company’s success.
He is also the most familiar, though no one locally has seen him dance before.
Camilo Rodriguez, who trained at the Joffrey and was a principal dancer with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, has been named ballet master of the new Vero company.
He will conduct the daily classes and rehearsals of the professional dancers who will come to Vero to perform Ballet Vero Beach’s repertoire.
The benefit, in partnership with Riverside Theatre, will include classical and contemporary ballet dancers from Ballet Nebraska and modern dancers from Boston’s Prometheus Dance, currently in Vero to teach the second annual Riverside Dance Festival.
That two week-long festival of 32 dance students, doubled in size from last summer, has been a cauldron of choreography, moving from classes in the studios in Riverside Children’s Theatre to rehearsals on the Main Stage.
For the benefit performance Saturday, festival instructors themselves are practicing during camp lunch breaks and in the evenings.
Natasha Grimm and Matthew Carter, principal dancers with Ballet Nebraska, will perform two of Carter’s works.
Prometheus artistic directors Diane Arvanites and Tommy Neblett are choreographing new dances. Rodriguez will dance his own work of modern dance, “Après.”
For Rodriguez, it marks a return to the stage four years after his career as a touring professional ballet dancer appeared to end with a recurring ankle injury. He was 32 at the time.
Today, his ankle is as strong as the rest of his compact body, toned from yoga and Pilates, which he teaches, as well as ballet master classes, his most recent at a Paris studio while on vacation with his partner Adam Schnell, Ballet Vero Beach’s founder and artistic director.
Set to a forceful piece of music by Edvard Grieg, Rodriguez’s solo is layered to stand up to the instruments, he says, strong on technique but at the same time “quirky and human.”
While the name “Après” has no special significance, he says, the dance marks a new phase in his life as a dancer.
Performing at 36 puts him in a cadre of dancers winnowed by injuries.
At the same time, he knows the urge to dance doesn’t wane with age.
He points to the innovative and highly respected modern dance troupe, Netherlands Dance Theater, that created a separate company so that dancers 40 and above could still perform.
“Look at Wendy Whelan,” he says referring to the New York City Ballet’s prima ballerina, who at 46, just created her own show of four contemporary works, which premiered at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts.
He also mentions Mikhail Baryshnikov, who, when he stopped dancing ballet went into post-modern dance.
“Look at painters that were once so literal and perfect then, they started taking lines away and leaving pure color,” says Rodriguez. “It doesn’t have to look a certain way. It just has to say something, and have some appeal artistically.”
He compares his time away from dance to aging wine.
“There are so many facets to dance,” he says. “Sometimes in your career, it’s all about technique. Then there’s breaking away from technique to be able to convey an idea through movement.”
“I’m really excited to be on stage again. The audience won’t perceive it, but I’m really trying to push a boundary for myself,” Rodriguez says, who compares dancing beyond youth to “singers in their 60s and maybe their voices don’t hit the notes in the same way.”
At 36, his professional trajectory has followed a predictable path: a talented, highly trained dancer enters the professional ranks only to retreat to the wings after an injury. Now, though, enough time has elapsed for him to work back up to performing again.
Rodriguez, the son of a university professor and a Montessori school teacher, left his native Mexico at age 4 after the death of his father.
Moving to Puerto Rico, his mother enrolled him in a school of the arts, where he played violin, learned karate and swam competitively. He was 14 when he tried ballet, encouraged by a girl who noticed his high arches.
Smitten, he took every class his studio offered, unselfconsciously joining the littlest girls in beginning ballet and the big girls in pointe class.
The next year, he went away to a ballet summer camp on Long Island, and through his instructors got a scholarship to study at the Joffrey Ballet.
Two and a half years later, he got a job with a modern dance company in Virginia, and a role in Mark Morris’s 1960’s version of “The Nutcracker.”
Rodriguez was cast as the second Marzipan, in Morris’ version, a Frenchman all in black carrying a baguette.
What made the role remarkable was that he danced it in black pointe shoes like a ballerina.
That role opened a door to others “en travesti” – in drag, eventually leading him to Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, the world’s most famous drag ballet.
At 5 foot 2, he was cast as principal dancer in female roles – what the Trocks call a “ballerine.”
Dancing with the Trocks is extremely hard work. Though the pay is great relative to other companies, the travel schedule is arduous and the principal dancers appear on stage for most of each performance.
Rodriguez’ roles were among the most best-known prima ballerina roles in classical ballet: Giselle, Medora in “Le Corsair,” Marie Taglioni’s role in the Grand Pas de Quatre, and the female in the Don Quixote pas de deux.
In 2009, Rodriguez was in his third year with the company, in Japan on a world tour, when he landed a leap – a coupé jeté – and sprained his ankle.
His director pushed: “You’re still on tour,” and he returned to his regular roles in three weeks instead of the recommended six.
This time he slipped in a run, and the ankle swelled even worse. The third time he was relegated to the corps de ballet.
At that point, he decided instead to end his contract early.
Meanwhile, he had met Schnell, who had won a spot with Ballets Trockadero that same summer, found the pace of travel and performing intolerable, and left to teach dance at Riverside.
Rodriguez followed, and got an offer to teach with a student company in Port St. Lucie.
He also was hired by Jayne McAllister, owner of Pilates of Vero – Rodriguez had trained with one of the top teachers in New York.
Today, Rodriguez is hoping there is freshness to his dance, thanks to muscle memory undone and bad habits broken from four years of down time.
While his ankle feels strong, Schnell, pulling rank as artistic director, exerted a little directorial control as he watched Rodriguez airborne for the third time for a photographer.
“And I think we will limit that jump to three,” Schnell said.
“First Steps: A Benefit for Ballet Vero Beach” is at 8 p.m. Saturday on Riverside’s Main Stage, with a reception for the dancers following the performance.
Tickets are $20 to $50 and can be bought on the ballet company’s new website, www.balletverobeach.org, or by calling the Riverside Theatre box office at 772- 231- 6990.
Joffrey-trained Camilo Rodriguez rehearses for the Saturday benefit for Vero’s new all-professional ballet company, Ballet Vero Beach. Rodriguez has been named the company’s ballet master. Staff photo:Benjamin Hager.
