Dance instructor finds contentment in leap to new life
BY ELAINE RAY
It's a long way from the studios and stages of Manhattan, Paris and other performance centers around the world. But for Theresa Maldonado, a former soloist with the Martha Graham Dance Company, teaching in the dance division is part of a welcome lifestyle adjustment.
Maldonado has shared the stage with the best of them, including Baryshnikov and Nureyev. She took her cues from Graham herself. Do her old friends ever ask her why she gave it all up?
Related Information:
"No, they say, 'Oh, you lucky thing, you have a life.' Maybe they would question my decision if I wasn't doing what I want to be doing," she says. "But I am."
In addition to teaching "Dance Heritage: Graham Technique" this quarter, Maldonado's "life" includes seeing physical therapy clients at OrthoSport, an outpatient physical therapy clinic in her new hometown, Mountain View. She also works with individuals and groups using Pilates, a fitness and rehabilitation technique. She takes a dance class three days a week at the Cubberley Community Center in Palo Alto; and she spends time with her new husband.
"I'd been dancing professionally for slightly over 15 years, nine touring with the Graham company, and that kind of lifestyle puts demands on your personal life. I was at a point where I wanted a different quality of life; i.e., a husband and a family of my own," Maldonado says.
Maldonado grew up in the Bronx, taking ballet classes sporadically. But it wasn't until she took her first modern dance class in college that she decided she wanted to be a professional dancer. "Ballet didn't speak to my soul. When I had my first modern dance class, I knew that that's what I had to do with my life," she said.
She earned a bachelor's degree in dance from the State University of New York College at Brockport and graduated magna cum laude. Her experience at SUNY, however, only made her realize that she "had a lot more work to do." Maldonado headed for New York City and started taking dance classes in a variety of styles. She studied at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, where she later taught, and also took classes at Ballet Hispanico and the Martha Graham Dance Center. She performed with the Joyce Trisler Danscompany and the Omega Liturgical Dance Company before joining Graham's group.
"I knew in undergrad that Graham technique felt right for my body, the dramatic spectrum of lyricism to percussiveness, innocence to eroticism resonated with my being. However, I chose to supplement my training by immersing myself in the study of other dance idioms so I wouldn't pigeonhole myself as one type of dancer," she says.
Maldonado auditioned for Graham's main company three times before she became a member in 1986. After her second try, she was offered a scholarship to the school and two months later made it into Graham's junior company. A month after that, she was invited to join the main company.
Maldonado remembers Graham, who died in 1991, as a "taskmaster, inspiration and icon all rolled into one" who would sit in the wings during every performance dressed in a shimmering Halston gown. Inevitably, she said, Graham would be greeted with a standing ovation after the dancers took their bows.
"She was a passionate woman in trying to motivate her dancers to give our all and not be concerned about whether we are "on our leg" or not [a term meaning being on balance]. Instead she would urge us to take the dare, take a risk and if you fall, so what," Maldonado recalls.
After nine years with the Graham company, Maldonado left to study physical therapy at the University of Pittsburgh. She also met her husband, Tom Marchok, who is now a Silicon Valley engineer, during that time. "I got a master's and a mister," she says with an exaggerated New York accent.
In her own class, Maldonado is chatty. Her instructions are a mix of metaphor and anatomy. "I want a full sentence, without punctuation," she demands, hoping to elicit a smooth movement sequence. "Imagine a soup ladle; your contraction is the ladle with your spine deepening to create the scoop," she says, using her petite frame to demonstrate. She later refers to a lifeless contraction as the "Silicon Valley slump."
"What's a lat?" one student stops the class to ask, after much talk of things like coccyxes and various other body parts. "The muscle that causes extension of the arm," Maldonado says, using her sweatshirt to demonstrate what happens with the spine in a particular movement.
"My goal for the class is to expose the students to the joy of movement and to give them both an intellectual and visceral understanding of the Martha Graham technique, a technique that's changed the way dance has evolved in this century. Before Graham broke traditional molds creating her unique movement vocabulary, ballet was the primary expression of movement."
Susan Cashion, coordinator of the dance division, praised Maldonado's teaching ability. "Sometimes beautiful performers aren't necessarily gifted teachers. The students are responding so nicely to her," Cashion says.
In fact, Maldonado's class has been so popular that several students urged her to teach extra sessions that they pay for out of their own pockets. Kristin Heavey, a graduate student in dance education, takes that extra class along with roughly a dozen others. She praised Maldonado's "healthy" teaching style. "She really understands the body," Heavey said, adding that she's never taken a class in Graham technique from a Graham dancer. "She's very clear in her teaching and she expresses the joy and the technique of dance together. She inspires her students as opposed to making them feel bad."
On March 9 at 4:15 p.m. in Roble Dance Studio, the class will do an open showing of the quarter's work. Students will conduct a lecture demonstration of the floor exercises and the movements across the floor. "There's a long movement combination that incorporates signature Graham technique. Then we'll end with a question-and-answer session," Maldonado says.
Maldonado misses the high that performance brings, and she misses the camaraderie that develops among a company of dancers. She does not miss the physical demands. "Martha's work demands extremes of subtlety and power. After a performance I was emotionally and physically enervated yet drained, paradoxical though that may seem. It's incredibly demanding and very wearing on the mind and body," she says.
And she's reminded of that wear and tear in her work at OrthoSport, where the dancers who come for physical therapy are referred to her.
Still, dance is at the root of her
passion. "That's something that doesn't change even though you stop
performing professionally. I believe once you're a dancer you're
always a dancer." SR