Copyright © 2009 by Alexi Zubiría

Duration of the recording: 24:18 minutes

Location: Mountain View, CA

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Camilla Kao: "He...one day when he was sixteen, he was going to pick up his girlfriend from her ballet class. And the teacher..."

Alexi Zubiría: I wasn't going to pick her up. He mis-said it. I went to find a girlfriend there.

CK: [Laughter] That's going to go in here.¹ You went to find a girlfriend at a ballet school. You didn't know anybody?

AZ: No, I had no intentions to dance. I had never seen ballet. I had never seen anything. It's just that this guy in high school had the brilliant idea, you know, [of] a ballet school is where the pretty girls are. And then I said, "Alright, man, let's go over there," you know, a typical high...teenage...

CK: So you just showed up? You just walked in?

AZ: I just showed up. And I told the guy..."I'm interested. Can we watch for a few days," you know, and...

CK: Oh, that's what you told the teacher? "We're interested. Can I watch for a few days?"

AZ: Yes..."Yes, you can watch." And after a few days, the guy said, "Well, have you made up your mind?" And...

CK: Oh, it was a man, the teacher was a man?

AZ: Yes, the teacher, yes, Hernando, yes. And then I said...to the director, "Yes, there's just one problem. I don't have any clothes. And I don't have any money," you know? And he went like, "Uh." He looked at me, "Okay, I have some clothes that are," you know...dance belt and tights. So I put them on. I put them on.

And I remember the teacher at the time was the woman, Irina. She was the...teacher at the time. But the director was the one who talked to me. But the teacher was the one who taught the class. So she put me in between two advanced students at the barre. So I just followed through, followed through, you know?

Within a few days, a couple of days, three days, I knew I could do this. Within two or three days, I was already turning.

CK: Yes, you told me three...triple pirouettes, right?

AZ: I was doing pirouettes, you know? So that's how the whole thing...

CK: Just by watching.

AZ: Just by watching. It just...it caught, you know? It caught. And I continued dancing. And then...the rest was just work.

I lasted in the school for, like, about a year. And I was kicked out, because I was just with the girls. I wasn't...

CK: You were talking or something, or just bothering them?

AZ: I think the director didn't like the fact that I was just, like, you know, being very playful with the girls. And so [I went], "Okay." So he kicked me out.

But then one of these girls, you know, that was in the school, she came from an upper class...in Bogotá, an upper class family. The International Ballet of Caracas happened to be in Bogotá at the time...performing in Bogotá...Bogotá...performing. And so she bought me a ticket. She bought me a ticket for the theater. And I remember going to the theater. And I remember her, from within the theater, handing out the ticket for me to come in.

And so I came in. And I saw the company. And I went like, "Wow, I want to go there." And that's exactly what I did.

♦ ♦ ♦

AZ: I picked up my things, dropped out of high school right there, because I didn't have any parents to tell me anything. I was an...orphan already.

CK: Oh, really, okay.

AZ: Yes, I was an orphan the whole time.

CK: Oh, I didn't know that.

AZ: ...since I was ten. And so I didn't have anybody telling me what to do. So I picked up my things, went to my hometown near the frontier, and told bye to my brothers...

CK: And you did what?

AZ: Said...told bye...I said bye to my brothers.

CK: Oh, said goodbye to them.

AZ: And my brothers said, "You're crazy. Don't dance. The life is unstable. You're going to be broke. You need to go to college. You need to go to the university." And I told them, "I will. Not right now. But I will."

CK: Older brother, younger?

AZ: Yes, older brothers. So we said goodbye. And then I picked up my things. And then by car...by bus, I went to Venezuela. I crossed the border without a passport.

But I'm Venezuelan. I just didn't have a passport. I just didn't have papers. But I just went for it with a, you know, with a...I think it was a birth certificate.

And I go through the frontier. And their customs, they say, "Where"...they ask me for the papers. I say, "Well, here it is." They look at me. "What do you mean? You're thinking of going to another country with this?" I said, "Well, I am from here." So they put me in jail.

CK: Oh, my God.

AZ: ...you know? And I was...I thought that my dreams were collapsing. I mean, I really thought, "This is it, bad luck." So I was there for two days. After two days...

Inside the jail, it was not a very good thing. There was a guy who was a car thief. There was a guy who was a person who makes things on fire. How do you call...he was an arsonist. And the other one was in jail because he decapitated somebody else. It was like, "Wow, great," you know?

So two days after, I was very sad. The capitán, you know, the guy who runs the jail, got me out and looked at me and asked me the same question again. "Why are you going across?" I said, "Because I'm from here, I said."

He looked into my eyes, hit me in the head and told me to get out of here and to go on into the country.

♦ ♦ ♦

AZ: He just went like this.² "Get out! Go!" And I was really happy. I got onto a bus. And I moved onto the capital...to Caracas.

I went to Caracas. In Caracas, I stayed with an uncle. And immediately, following the day that I arrived there, I...on a Monday, I went to the National Ballet School of Venezuela. There Lidija Franklin, she allowed me to take a class. And immediately after the class, she said, "You can take all the classes you want for free." So I was taking, like, between four and five classes a day.

Two weeks later, after being in the school, I was...being noisy, jumping in this studio. It's a studio that you could see from outside, you know? You could see it up on the top. But I happened to be jumping on top of the office of the ballet company.

CK: The ballet company.

AZ: The ballet company. And the director, you know, comes out and shouts, you know, "Be quiet! You're making too much noise..." He looked at me. And he said, "Can you come down?" And I came down. And then he invited me to take a class.

I took a class. And right after the class, he asked me to stay in the company. A week later, I was in Buenos Aires...in Argentina, and then in Brazil, and then ended up in Colombia, which is the place where I first saw them, again.

CK: Saw them again, who, the...

AZ: Where I...first saw the ballet company...this ballet company. And so it was just a, I mean...

CK: This is like a couple weeks, you're saying, of...you were...when you were jumping, that was only a couple weeks after you were there.

AZ: Yes.

CK: And so you were traveling three weeks after you showed up.

AZ: Yes, I was traveling already, traveling the world. I wasn't doing much, rolling on the floor, lifting somebody here and there. But I wasn't doing much.

Then that was it. That was...just it. I started traveling the world. And I was in that company for six years, traveling the world. We went everywhere, everywhere.

We danced in New York City at the City Center a few times. We danced in all the major festivals in Europe, all the summer festivals. And we did...that year, as a matter of fact, that I joined it, Alvin Ailey happened to be setting The River...famous ballet, River...The River, which he set for the American Ballet Theatre...he choreographed. And so he happened to be down there.

So I got to work with him. I got to work with huge celebrities right away of the ballet world, like Alvin Ailey, Choo San Goh, Hans van Manen, John Butler. These were all the people that I was working with, you know, from the start.

♦ ♦ ♦

AZ: Before...during the time that I was in Bogotá, I was, you know...like I said, I was an orphan. And I was broke. I mean, broke. I spent days without eating, often days, days without a bite to eat.

I would...buy a...block of sugar, brown sugar, and just eat on that day and night. And a lot of the times, I was eating paper. You know the cooking magazines?

CK: Yes. You're going to make me cry.

AZ: Cooking magazines, I remember. I still remember seeing the cooking magazines and seeing the food painted, photographed. And I would chew on that, because it was just so...I mean, I just...you know? And because of that, because of that, I worked so hard when I was at the San Francisco Ballet to go to school.

♦ ♦ ♦

CK: Were you with anybody? I mean, you have older brothers and a sister, two brothers and a sister?³

AZ: We were all spread out. In Bogotá...we were...my two older brothers were there. But we were, like, struggling to survive.

CK: Did you live with anybody or no?

AZ: No, no, no, we all...my little brother lived with a family. And they kind of took care of him. He was younger.

Then my older brother, he was on his own, you know? He would live with friends and here and there. And I was on my own.

CK: You were like ten, you said, ten?

AZ: By the time I got to Bogotá, I was fourteen...fourteen. I wandered for three years...sixteen, you know? And I put myself in a school. I used to...tell somebody else, "Okay, come on, let's go to school and register me..." with the adult.

CK: What, register you...oh, yes.

AZ: Yes. Yes, because you need to go with an adult.

So I just...would tell anybody and say, "Just come with me. Just do me a favor. Just say that you're my mentor, you're my parent or whatever. And just put me down to go to school." And I did that on my own, you know? I did, you know, my school and got myself into school until I could no longer do it, which was at age sixteen, when I met ballet.

I just went like, "You know, this is my way out. Ballet is my way out. It's not school."

♦ ♦ ♦

AZ: I'm not from Bogotá.

CK: Where are you from? What is the town?

AZ: I'm from Maicao. Yes, it's a...it looks like that.⁴

CK: Okay, how do you spell it, m...

AZ: Mai...this is the capital of the state. But the town where I come from is a little smaller, about an hour away from there, Maicao. M a i c a o. Maicao.

And it's a small little town. You walk everywhere. And it's a...smuggling town, used to be. It just became a free port, because the commerce is so strong there, the trade, that they decided to turn it into a free port. And that's where I come from.

I remember, when I was a kid, all the streets were not paved. It was just clean sand, desert sand. And that's where you walked everywhere. I still have a lot of family there. But that's where I come from.

It's a little town. There's no culture. There's nothing, nothing, never seen ballet, never heard classical music, nothing. And that's where I come from. After my mother died, we were all forced to, like, pick up your things and leave. Make it on your own, you know?

CK: Yes, so where did you...so your father had already passed away then?

AZ: No, he was not...he was just not...see, I'm one of forty-three.⁵

CK: How many?

AZ: One of forty-three. He had many women. My mother pushed him away. And my mother became the sole, you know, owner of the family.

And she just...I don't...I really don't understand. We were too little to understand. And now she passed away...to understand. And I'm much...I'm not much older...I'm older than she...she died when she was forty-four. So I don't really know what happened.

But I'm...but I guess she knew that he had this many kids, but not really. I don't think she knew, because he's married. He was married. And from his first marriage, he had...a bunch of kids. And those guys, they're like seventy, seventy-five.

CK: Now.

AZ: Yes. Yes, they're much older than us. But it seems...he seems to have gone on a rampage at age, something like, fifty and had multiple kids with, like, five women at the same time...like seven each, something like that.

♦ ♦ ♦

CK: Oh my goodness.

AZ: Yes.

CK: So you know all the forty...the other forty-two?

AZ: Oh, yes, when I go over there, it's like they fight for us to stay there. They're like, "No, you stay with me." "No..."

And when my father was alive, the kids would, you know...he was older...already old, you know? So they drove him. Okay, spend a few hours in this home. Then another kid would come pick him up and...to spend a few hours in the other home, and so on like that...doing the rounds.

CK: So did you know him then?

AZ: I saw him, you know? I have recollections when I was a kid and he used to come. He would come from Venezuela to Colombia across the frontier and visit us, you know, for like a day. And he would leave and...yes.

CK: So when...but then when your mother died, the other kids, I guess, they couldn't help you? Or it just...

AZ: No, it was in another...they were in Venezuela. We were in Colombia. You see, it's...well, you see, in the area where this happened, Venezuela is within two hours by car. So it's kind of a big area. It's like the Bay Area, but divided by a line, two countries, you know? And so he went around like that.

And people...for us to go to Venezuela, it was a problem, you know? And we just didn't want it, you know? I...it was too...we were too young to understand what was going on. And when she died, I recall myself [thinking], "Okay, this is like 'You live or you die.'" I understood right away. You...either you live or you die.

CK: You leave the town. You leave...

AZ: No, like you survive or you don't. Yes. You survive or you don't. That's...

CK: So you were ten. So what did you do?

AZ: We hung out with my grandmother a little longer. And then she was too old. And she said, "You guys have to go." And it's like...and the younger girl, she was put in a convent at six...yes.

And my little brother and I were put in a...by my uncle into a boarding school. Not good. I mean, the boarding school had, you know, scorpions, you know? It was horrible. It was horrible being in this place. I was kicked out of the boarding school because I was caught smoking. And I lied about it.

And the person that saw me smoking, she said, "I saw you." And I went like, "Hm." And in front of the school, right then and there, the director of the school did me a favor. She kicked me out of the school, right there. "Pick up your things and leave right now." I went like...I was twelve, you know, really young...thirteen. And so I picked up one of those foam mattresses and my little bag. And I just went in Bucaramanga, walking like this, walking like this, walking like this, [looking around] for rent...

♦ ♦ ♦

AZ: And the woman says, "Okay, yes, I have a room for rent," you know? And I said, "Can I..." you know? And it was not a room for rent. It was me sharing the room with these two college guys, you know? But I didn't tell them I was thirteen. I told them, "I'm seventeen."

CK: Did you look seventeen?

AZ: I looked seventeen. I lied, yes, because otherwise they'll take advantage of you, you know? People will take advantage of you. Or they might not even rent the room to you, right? So I lied about my age.

And I used to tell the...one of the college kids was the son of the owner of the house. I used to tell the guy, "Hey, let's go to school. And you tell them you're my father, okay? You sign off...sign me in." And I was the best student in my class. I...got a diploma every month, because I was the best student. I wanted to be a general back then, because it was a military school.

CK: So how did you pay? How did you pay rent?

AZ: We had a little bit of money that my mother left us from these properties that were rented. And the money was only enough to, like, pay for school and to eat for like a week.

CK: So it was...was it regular or just one pot of money?

AZ: No, no, my brother distributed it. My older brothers distributed it every month. But it was only enough to pay for school and one week of food. So the other three weeks, you had to, like, you know, whatever, because they put into our heads that the school is, you know...if you don't have any money to eat, but you have money to pay the school, you pay for the school and you figure out the food. But the school is first.

CK: Your brothers said this. That's very remarkable, is it, like unusual that the priority for school...is that...was the common back there?

AZ: Yes. Yes. So the school is...in Colombia, education is first. Although, I mean, there's...they, you know...there are a lot people who don't know how to read and write. But in my family, it was like that. So...I went to school for a year there in Bucaramanga...in this other city.

And then I said, "You know what? I don't want to be a general. I just...this military thing, yes, I'm good at it...not enough," you know? And then I went to Bogotá.

And my little brother stayed one more year in the boarding school. And then after one year, he hooked up with this family that used to live in Maicao. And this family was...but he was friends with the kids. So they took him. They said, "No, like, I know your parents," you know? "Just come in," you know...and...in Bogotá. They will let you live for very little money. So they took care of him.

But I was on my own.

♦ ♦ ♦

So in Bogotá, I wandered for a year and a half...I studied with musicians. I started playing the guitar. "And I guess I don't have the voice for..." And then that's when I met my friend, Hayden. And Hayden said, "Come on, let's go to the ballet school," you know...

♦

Almost six years later, I knew that I had not finished. I knew that I wasn't done. I knew that I was...that I wasn't finished. I knew that I was not the dancer that I wanted to be. But I had seen Nina dance on stage. I had seen her school. And I had heard about her. So I approached her...no, not with this school, not with the ballet. She had her own school. So I asked Nina.

I said, "Nina, can you train me, because I want to go to the Jackson competition." And then she said, "Okay, I can train you, but with one condition: that you dance with me." Her last show. She was sixty-four.

So I happened to be probably the last dancer that ever danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo,⁶ even though she was sixty-four...

♦

And I have found many people like that. Nina Novak is one of those. Roland Petit, whom I danced for, you know, I was just in Berlin. I was in Berlin.

And of course at the time that I was in Berlin, I was there with the most amazing dancers in the world. I mean, what are the chances of me, this guy from Colombia, ending up in Berlin at the right time to dance multiple times with Rudolph Nureyev...

♦

As I was waiting there at the barre for the rehearsal to finish...and Roland Petit happened to be staging a ballet⁷ there. So he saw me and said, "Hey, what happened to you? What's wrong with you?"

I said, "Oh, you know, I'm not doing well," you know? "I don't like it. I don't like being here." And he right away invited me to join his company...

♦

And we did something like fifteen shows in December at the Palace of Congress in Paris. Big success. The house is like five thousand people...five, six thousand people in the congress...in the Palace of Congress. It was packed every time. So I did the cat. And I was alternating with Patrick Dupond. He was...a French star at the time.

And Peter Schaufuss was the prince, the owner of the cat. He was my master. But the cat was the star, you know? He did everything. So I was in incredible spirits. There's an example there of a detail where somebody just alters, you know, the course of your career, you know?

And then, you know, I became, you know, well-known in the dance community, until I received the...phone call from Helgi Tomasson to join the San Francisco Ballet.

♦ ♦ ♦

Yes, I always felt like, you know...I'm not a very religious person. But I always felt there was somebody next to me...just somebody, because I made so many mistakes and came out alive...

♦ ♦ ♦

So there's just so much, you know? There's just so much. But she had really high...goals for us. Look at all the things she bought and, you know...she used to say all the time that I was going to be a priest...all the time. And I guess I am in a way...because I'm calm.

I'm, you know, soft spoken...yes...gentle, you know, and...so she always thought, you know...the only thing not good about it is that my brother would get the bicycle and I would get a pencil and books and things like that...for gifts, yes. He would get the fun things. I would just get books and a pen and all of these things, you know?

¹A brochure about the Western Ballet for which AZ began his story.
²With his right hand, AZ struck the back of the top right area of his head.
³AZ's mother had seven children.
⁴AZ pointed to one wall of his office, where a poster of a coastal town and the name “Riohacha" hung.
⁵Actually more than forty-three.
⁶I.e., AZ was the last partner of a dancer of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
⁷Puss in Boots