What happens when you can no longer do what you love? Ballet’s David Hallberg found out three years ago, when a torn ligament and surgical complications sidelined him for 2¹/₂ years.
“One week dragged into the next,” the American Ballet Theatre star writes in “A Body of Work: Dancing to the Edge and Back” (Touchstone). “I’d wake up … stare blankly at the gray walls in my bedroom, and find barely any impetus to continue the fighting.”
‘I’m a stronger dancer and a better person — more grateful and patient, more aware of my surroundings instead of being deep in my own world.’
But fight he did, finally embarking on an intensive 14-month rehab program in 2015 that let him dance again. Until then, the now-35-year-old tells The Post, “I was mired in Depression 101, drinking too much and smoking [and] totally broken.”
Dance, Hallberg says, was both his vocation and his salvation. Slightly built and sports-averse, he was bullied as a child: Only in dance class did he feel accepted. Talent, work and drive propelled him to the top of the dance world. He was the first American to join Russia’s famed Bolshoi Ballet — only to confront his “worst nightmare” in 2014, when his injuries threatened to keep him from dancing.
After a miserable year or so in New York, the Chelsea resident bought a one-way ticket to Australia. He’d danced with its ballet and knew that the company had a terrific physical-therapy team. It was there, while rebuilding his body, that he finished this memoir.
“I feel like a different human being now,” says Hallberg, who’ll present the Clive Barnes Foundation’s dance award in January before heading off on ABT’s national tour. “I’m a stronger dancer and a better person — more grateful and patient, more aware of my surroundings instead of being deep in my own world.”
He tells The Post about some life lessons he hopes both dancers and non-dancers alike can take away from his book.
Slow down. For years, Hallberg raced from one performance to the next. No more. “The injury taught me to take my time with the rehearsals and performances I commit to, rather than try to pack everything in. I feel I’m dancing better than ever now.”
Break with the past. Before he left for Australia, Hallberg, who wore his blond hair long, as many male dancers do, shaved his head: “I just shed that image, like a snake sheds its skin, to rebuild myself back up completely.”
Rest. While in New York, even when he wasn’t dancing, Hallberg busied himself with shows, dinners and openings. During rehab, he learned to take time for the simple things: enjoying his morning coffee, cooking simple meals. “To my surprise,” he writes, “I found a new sort of contentment.”
Commit. Once he signed on with his physical therapists, he says, “I told them I’d do everything they told me, and I’d be here as long as it takes to get an answer [to] ‘Can I dance again?’ ” It took him 14 months before the answer was yes.
