Interview with Kristóf Szabó soloist of the Polish National Ballet
When he heard the diagnosis, he did not wonder if he would be able to continue dancing, but rather when he would be able to do it again. With persistence and tenacity, he re-learned how to work with his body and did everything he could to continue doing what he loved most. In his life, passion and beauty have been severely tested.
MW: Audiences usually only see the end result, the beautiful dance on stage, the beautiful performance. Today, I would like to look a little deeper and touch on what lies in the heart of an artist. What makes them not give up on their passion even in the face of difficult experiences? First, Kristóf, I would like to ask you what you value most in life?
KS: A lot changed after I was diagnosed with the disease. It was a moment when a lot of things had to be re-evaluated for myself. So I had the opportunity to stop and think about what I really value in life. What I’m most grateful for is that I have good people around me, and that I can get a lot of positivity from them. I think relationships are important and I certainly still don’t care enough about them. I should care more, or maybe I want to care more about them. Experiences are also important in my life, the fact that I have the opportunity to collect experiences and use them later. No matter what they were, I am grateful even for the bad ones, because they shape me as I am now. We often get upset when something bad happens to us, I think in a completely different way now. I’m glad that something like this happened to me, because I can learn from it, change myself, and respond to difficult situations. All this shapes me as a person. The third thing is beauty. I am very sensitive to it. I always appreciate it. I see it in people and things around me.
MW: And what do you value most in yourself?
KS: Sensitivity. I think that’s my asset and I nurture it a lot. I like my sensitivity, it gives me a lot of interesting feelings. I see a lot of beauty, it touches me strongly and it makes everything seem more valuable to me.
And then there’s honesty. Truthfulness and lack of pretence are qualities I value in myself in particular.
MW: Sensitivity, honesty, the beauty around us, the beauty in people – all of this fits perfectly with the profession you practise. What were the beginnings? Where did your passion for dance come from?
KS: I was already dancing as a child. When I was seven years old I attended dance classes. I started with ballroom dancing, then I performed in the Rampa Musical Theatre, in the Roma Theatre in musicals, and also in the House of Culture in Otwock. When I was in high school I started thinking about what I wanted to do in life and I felt that I wanted to dance, that this is what I would like to do every day. I attended classes at the House of Culture at the time. The training sessions were very intense. We practised various dance styles: contemporary, jazz, disco dance, and many others. The classes were led by Katarzyna Kubalska, who graduated from the Warsaw Ballet School, and she encouraged me to go to ballet school. I wasn’t very interested in it. I knew almost nothing about ballet at the time. I associated ballet with stereotypes and didn’t take such an option seriously at all. However, when thinking about what to do next, I didn’t imagine myself in a certain field of study. I was in a maths and geography class and studied rather well, but I didn’t want to tie my future to that. I wanted to be involved in dance.
I also made the decision to apply to ballet school for financial reasons. It was pure calculation for me. In our family we never had money for dance classes. My mother did everything to make it possible for me. I am extremely grateful to her, because she took on every extra job, sold her belongings and bought nothing for me for so many years so that I could develop my passion for dance. I can only see it now years later, but it is definitely because of her that I have been dancing all this time. So ballet school was the easiest option for me. I knew I wanted to dance and I knew that there I would get a lot of dance hours for free. So I made a decision and in the middle of the school year, in my first year of high school, I went to audition for the Ogólnokształcąca Szkoła Baletowa in Warsaw.
MW: It’s unusual for ballet to start so late….
KS: Yes, for sure. I was just lucky to be a boy, it’s always easier for boys, in ballet especially. No one would have accepted a girl at my level then into ballet school at the age of sixteen. And I went there knowing nothing about classical dance, even though I thought I knew everything, that I was great. As I recall that audition now… It’s impossible that they accepted me! I was doing the exercises, completely the opposite of what I should have been doing.
The beginning at ballet school was hard. I had to realise that I didn’t really know anything about classical dance and start from the beginning. At school I was getting twos and threes as the only one in the class. The other students had at least fours. I felt terrible. I think that at the beginning the teachers didn’t see any career in me. I remember comments like “well, maybe you’ll get into “Mazowsze”…”.
MW: Have you considered anything other than dance at all?
KS: No. I was fascinated by dance. Also thanks to Natalia Pasiut, who I became friends with at school. She is very talented and was an example for me. I wanted to dance like her. We found a common language and motivated each other. We looked for ways to earn money so we could go somewhere and learn more. We went to ballet workshops. We watched films on the internet, which weren’t as plentiful then as they are now. To see something from London back then was a big deal. We followed every video on YouTube. We had a big following and great passion.
MW: And this passion led you to realise your dream of becoming a dancer. What do you value most in your work?
KS: Definitely the opportunity to interact with beauty and with art. That’s extremely important to me because I love art in many forms, and ballet just brings together different art disciplines. I love to indulge in it, I love to be completely involved in the process. I appreciate works and productions that are complex, interesting, when I feel that the creators have a definite purpose and intention, when I understand why I’m doing a movement, that I’m not just doing it for a nice aesthetic pose. I like challenges where I see a deeper meaning, a sense of purpose, and that’s when I really engage with my whole self. And those are the most precious moments, when I forget about the whole world. There are moments when I simply move into a story and even after the rehearsal is over I live the performance or the role. If I want my gestures to be natural, I don’t think about how I would make the gesture, but how the character I’m creating would make it. I have to think about where she comes from, her experiences, what she’s been through and how she would make the same movement, or how she would react to a message or situation. These are the things I value most in this job.
MW: What production, choreography do you particularly recall?
KS: The most profound and valuable for me for sure was The Lady of the Camellias. There I had the opportunity to dance the lead role of Armand. That experience cannot be compared to any other. I was totally committed. It is an extremely physically tough role to dance. For almost three hours a man has to be on stage, he is in every act. He only leaves the stage for ten minutes. It is also emotionally very complex. I really had to move into the story.
We have also had the opportunity to work with the likes of Wayne McGregor, Jiří Kylián and Emil Wesolowski. During the productions of such choreographers, when I am on stage – I feel alive.
MW: The stage is a special place for a dancer. It is at once a source of strength, motivation and a place of fulfilment. It is the heart that gives rhythm. What do you usually feel when you go on stage?
KS: I feel a lot of excitement. Every time. And now that we go on stage so infrequently, every outing is special to me and… I then think about stopping and looking at this stage I’m standing on. To look at those ten floors up, what space it is, how the decorations are tucked above us. I imagine an aeroplane that could park itself on this stage because it’s so huge, especially when the side and back pockets are raised, when this space is all open. When I feel a breath of air when the curtain opens – then there’s such cold air coming onto the stage from the audience – I love that feeling. That’s when I know that this amazing moment, this is my moment and I want to seize it.
The daily work of a dancer is not at all pleasant. We love dancing, that’s why we do it, but we experience a lot of sacrifices, tremendous effort and often unpleasant situations on a daily basis. That is why this moment on stage is special.
And I think about it (this is another change that has happened in me) that I dance only for myself, I don’t dance for anyone else. Once I’m on stage I don’t think about whether my dancing pleases the producers of the show. I don’t want to prove to anyone that I did it right. This is my special moment and I use every second for myself. I also share it with those who came to watch me, but I only remember them when I bow out. It’s only when it’s over that I think: “thank you for coming, for wanting to pay for the ticket.”
And a word about bows, because everyone bows a little differently. I, by bowing, want to show respect for the audience. I try to see the whole audience, starting the bow from the highest balcony, looking through the second balcony, the first balcony, the amphitheatre, all the way to the first row. I try not to bow at once, not to bow only my head, I bow with my whole body until the last moment, so that the audience feels respect.
MW: The profession of a dancer is not just about excitement, applause and audience adoration. What are the biggest challenges and difficulties in this profession?
KS: In my opinion, it’s the everyday adversities that are the hardest – the ordinary little things.
This profession is physically hard and we know it. We want to do it, we want to have challenges dancing in ballet, we want to do the hardest roles. Everyone wants to be tired, because then we feel that we have done something, that it was good work. Over the years we get used to the pain and to the fatigue. To start doing this profession, we have to develop pathologies in the body. We have to deform our body to make it look this way and not that way, and we are constantly striving to make it look even better. We are used to fatigue and to pain. This pain threshold is rising all the time. The same pain that a person working in an office feels, we don’t pay attention to. For me, it is normal that it must hurt when I stretch, or when I can barely move the next day after an intense workout. I have to go through a moment of that pain to be able to keep dancing.
However, the most difficult thing is the small adversities, also mental, moments of doubt…
This is consistent work that repeats itself every day. Surrendering to such a routine is very hard, which is why you have to motivate and inspire yourself all the time to keep your passion alive.
In a dancer’s job, a lot also depends on other people making decisions, such as who dances or whether to dance at all. This is a challenge for many people. It often feels like a struggle to be able to dance something, to prove yourself, to not give up. And not everyone succeeds. Often not because they are inferior, or that they did something wrong, but because it depends on the person who decided. There are a lot of talented dancers in every company and we don’t really know if the girl who never got the chance to dance could be a star now if she got that chance. This is probably the most difficult thing about our profession.
MW: What motivates you not to give up?
KS: I just enjoy doing it, it’s my motivation. I don’t look at dancing as something I have to do anymore. I only dance for myself, so I treat dancing as a pleasure. The effort and effort I put in brings me satisfaction. I feel good, with myself. If I didn’t feel pleasure from it, I would like to stop doing it. I wouldn’t want to continue such a hard profession if I didn’t feel such motivation and pleasure.
MW: You’ve talked about the day-to-day difficulties and challenges, but you also face the huge challenge of your illness. Could you share how you have taken it on and how you are coping with it?
KS: A year ago at the end of February I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and unfortunately it was diagnosed on the day of my most important performance, The Lady of the Camellias. As I mentioned earlier, it was my greatest success, and I don’t know if something like that can ever happen again. The performance was preceded by a month of hard preparation and by then we could already see that something was wrong with me. I already had symptoms of illness before, but I didn’t realise it. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. I could attribute all the symptoms typical of diabetes I had at the time to hard physical work. It was the time of the opening night of Lost Souls, in which I danced in three parts. A very intense, stressful time, so the fact that I was losing weight, that I was drinking a lot more water, that I was sweating a lot, that I was catching cramps, I could justify everything.
However, during my preparation, I realised that something I had done very well before was now causing me a lot of difficulty and I had to put in a lot more strength to do the same exercises with an even lighter partner. This was the moment when I decided to do research. I picked up the results of my blood tests the morning before the performance and I was no longer let out of the outpatient clinic. I knew nothing about diabetes at the time. I had no idea what sugar was good. When the doctor said the sugar was 560, I thought “okay, but what does that mean?”, I didn’t know it was something serious. I was referred to the hospital. I tried so hard, I put all my heart in and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such an effort as I did then to dance in a show, but it didn’t work….
MW: That was probably your most difficult experience….
KS: Yes, it was a very hard experience, I cried a lot… I was very sad, but there was no way out. Then maybe through my ignorance, I approached it calmly and thought “I have diabetes, what do we do next? What do we do about it?” I didn’t allow myself a moment of breakdown at all.
I didn’t know how diabetes was treated, what it entailed, but I gradually learnt every day and have been learning ever since. It required a long time of adaptation. Actually, for me, fortunately, we had a break at the time due to the outbreak of the pandemic. With a six-month break, I was able to calmly learn how to do push-ups again – two and then four, then run a small distance. It was a very hard process, because I had to re-learn physical effort, and physical effort in dance, is extreme effort, even though dance is associated with lightness.
The hardest moments were when I felt like I was going to pass out after that third push-up, or when I really had to sit down after walking a few steps and I fainted. That’s when I was actually close to collapsing. In those moments, I couldn’t imagine that I could do a hard performance again and dance to my full potential. I thought, ‘I think this must be the end of it…’.
It was certainly only thanks to Natalia and her help that I was able to get through this difficult time. She was my personal trainer. She stood over me, did all the exercises with me, encouraged me: “One more push-up, one more five seconds, one more piece further” and we did it every day. In the beginning, the biggest exercise was walking. Every day we walked a piece further. We were then in a beautiful place in the countryside, in the Masuria region, from the beginning of April until the end of August. I’m glad we had a long break because I was able to take advantage of it and take as much time as I needed. Every day, with peace of mind, in nature, one step at a time.
This process is not over, I am learning all the time. I am learning every day. I am learning how my body reacts. I am learning every food, every product – how it affects me. Everything is an experiment – how a behaviour, a situation affects me. The same at work, the daily experience – how a lesson affects me, what I need to eat to do that lesson, what dose of insulin to take for such and such exercise. How much I’m going to exercise, what time I’m going to eat, what I’m going to stress about, everything is important. I have this assumption that I can’t stress anymore in my life. Of course I know this is unrealistic, but I should avoid stress.
MW: You’ve actually already partially answered the next question, but let’s dwell on it for a moment more. Has this illness changed your attitude to life, to your profession, to everything?
KS: Yes, I started to appreciate other things in life more. Before, I would think about my career, or what I haven’t danced yet, what I want to achieve. Now I tend to think more about what pleasure I want to have from dancing. I think this is a really good attitude, and my dancing has benefited from it too. I think I can be a much better dancer now than I was before. Among other things, because I take more care of my body. I can even perform better than healthy people who don’t take such care of their bodies. I think this is an important aspect of this disease, worth highlighting, because people don’t think about it, or they forget. A person who has been diagnosed with diabetes should not be crossed out because of it, because perhaps they will be a more valuable employee because of how motivated they are every day in their normal activities. How she is mobilised and systematic to do so many things at once, to test her sugar, to eat at a given hour, to do physical exercise, to change dressings, insertions, to adapt and check that everything is ready to do any work.
A person with diabetes could do better in any profession, and unfortunately often such a person is not employed, or advised against pursuing a career in ballet or sport. Or a child to graduate from ballet school, because we don’t want to have the problem of a child who faints at physical exertion. Or maybe we should try to look at it in a different way and teach such a child how to treat himself, how to control his body so that fainting does not happen. Encourage that he can have even better results by how much he will be forced to work on his body. And he can be an even better dancer or artist. And something like that probably hurts me the most, that’s what I want to pay attention to. I have already been approached by people who have been recommended to stop attending ballet school due to illness. I would like teachers, educators or coaches to be supportive, to be mentors.
MW: I think that through your experience and your attitude you have become such a mentor and are a support for many people, both in the artistic community and among people with diabetes. What other desires, dreams do you have?
KS: Overall I’m happy, I’m happy with what I have and I don’t need much more. In the future I would like to continue sharing beauty through movement, dance, not necessarily in the form I do now. I would also like to explore my other dance-related skills, to continue my passions and that I can do it when I want, not because I have to in order to make money. I very much dream of living in the countryside, to be surrounded by nature, from which I draw a lot of energy. I also dream to discover new things, new skills, to learn some new ways to show beauty. I like photography, fine arts and fashion. The creative process in fine arts or fashion can be just as interesting and complex as performing on stage. I would like to get to know new artistic communities and more creative people doing other arts.
MW: Sensitive, creative personalities are able to find each other, and the combination of their talents is extremely enriching, not only for themselves but also for the world around them. I wish you all your dreams come true. Finally, I would like to ask you about success. What would you say is your greatest achievement?
KS: It’s definitely to do with the stage, the moments when I felt that I was truly in the role, that I had a wonderful performance. The Lady of the Camellias, for example, when I could see that what I was doing on stage was affecting so many people. I think that’s my success, that I was able to move so many people. When I was crying on stage standing close to the audience and I could see that they were crying too, the response from them after the performance, the deafening applause, the cheers from one thousand seven hundred people – even now when I think about it, it makes me want to cry straight away. I don’t have many recordings of the performances, but when I do have some recordings, I sometimes turn on just the moment of the bows… Sometimes people come after the performance to share their emotions, their emotion. I’ve also received letters saying what an impact my dance had on them, that it stayed with them, that they were still thinking about it at home afterwards for a long time… This is my success.
MW: Thank you so much for talking to me, for showing how powerful passion and beauty can be. Beauty is usually associated with something fragile, sometimes elusive, and in our practical world, often something unnecessary. Thank you for portraying a beauty that is steadfast, unshakeable, even in the face of life’s hard trials. Beauty that saves, brings hope and gives strength to go on, to reach higher, to dare to dream. This is the power of beauty tried and tested.
Interviewed by Monika Węgrzyn
President of the Dance to Be Foundation
The interview appeared in the quarterly magazine “Dance” No. 1/2021 (36)
