The following is from a set of four interviews conducted with members (and one former member) of New York City Ballet, during a Friday Nov. 2 rehearsal for “A Gala Evening.” The article was set to appear in a Sunday Arts section of the Mobile Press-Register, but it was decided by the editors later NOT to publish them. They are being posted here for the first time.

Amanda Edge

I spoke with Amanda Edge in the theatre bandroom. She stretched and twisted on the carpet as we discussed her life on Broadway, over sounds of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” drifting through a closed door. Edge is a Texas native who joined New York City ballet at age 17. In 2006 she left the company to join the Las Vegas cast of “Phantom of the Opera.” She was recently appointed Associate Artistic Director of the Longview Ballet Theatre in Texas, and is a student at Fordham University studying arts administration and business.

Q: First, what can you tell me about your background as a dancer, where did you start?

Edge: I started out in Ballet Austin in Austin, Texas where I was born, and then I continued in Brazil. We moved there when I was ten, that’s when I really fell in love with dancing and decided that that was it for me. That’s what I wanted to do.

Q: When did you join the School of American Ballet (SAB) and eventually New York City Ballet?

Edge: I went to New York when I was 16, to go to SAB and the following year I was asked to apprentice with the New York City Ballet. I danced there for almost, well, about 14 years actually. I’m currently doing “Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway.

Q: I wanted to ask you about that. How long have you been doing that, and what’s it like?
 

Edge: Oh it’s a blast. I left New York City Ballet to go to Las Vegas to be in the new ‘Phantom’ out there, so Hal Prince came out to work with us, for about two months. They didn’t re-conceive the whole show, but they condensed it to the $40 million theatre that they had built to really kick it off. So I was there for almost a year, and I just want to come home come back to New York to my apartment and to my boyfriend. When I told them that I was going to be leaving, they said, ‘Oh we would love to use you as a vacation and injury swing on Broadway.’ I said, ‘Let’s do it!’ [Laughs] So I left Vegas in March, did a couple of gigs danced with New York City Opera then basically in the summer started teaching.

Q: What’s the biggest difference between performing for a Broadway show and performing ballet?
 

Edge: Well, one of the blessings of being at New York City Ballet is that the repertoire is so extensive. You have a huge repertoire, so other than ‘Nutcracker,’ which you do for six weeks, or a two week run of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ or a two week run of ‘Swan Lake’ or something like that, every night you go in and do something different. You rehearse all day, and you might rehearse four different ballets in a day and like at night, do a totally different one than even what you rehearsed. With ‘Phantom’ you know it’s the same show, eight shows a week. So it’s a different mindset. You have to because it’s important that each new audience seeing it for the first time get the same sort of attention. You can’t phone it in. So it just takes a different mindset. In some ways it’s nice because you can fall into your routine, but then what’s exciting about New York City Ballet, is that you’re always doing something different. But I would like to keep up doing musicals on Broadway. That’s where I stand now, that’s what I love to do. I mean, I still love doing ballet and I was thrilled when they asked me to join the group.

Q: I know that you were recently appointed artistic director to Longview Ballet Theatre…

Edge: Oh my God! [Laughs] You’ve done your work! Associate artistic director, yes.
 

Q: Do you have any big plans for what you’re going to do with them?

Edge: Well the director, Pat George Mitchell had been my teacher over the summer because my grandparents live in northeast Texas, so when I was living in Brazil we’d come back to visit them and I said ‘I really want to study in the summer.’ They were looking around and some schools had tap and jazz and fire baton twirling and gymnastics and all this modern, and I said ‘I don’t know, I really want to focus on ballet,’ and she was really the only one interested. Basically she taught a little bit of modern, but it was really mostly ballet. She really took me under her wing and she sort of became my mentor. In 2002 was our first year, because we began discussing it in 2001, and when September 11 happened, we decided to take professionals down from New York, sort of like this sort of situation to dance with their school. I thought that was a one year thing, it was a smash hit. We did a bunch of Balanchine ballets and I worked a bit as a repetetor for the Balanchine Trust so I got permission to stage the different ballets for the girls and went down with four dancers total and we got such a great response that it turned into a thing. So that was 2002, and we’re now going to so ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in 2008. So its continued and I think the community has really been supportive cause Texas is a football place, cheerleading rules. But they’ve been very embracing, she talked to me over the summer and said ‘I’d really like to appoint you as my associate artistic director,’ and I thought ‘Wow.’ I was sort of shocked and kind of honored at the same time. She said, ‘I know you have your life in New York and you’re performing there,’ she said ‘you basically are my associate artistic director; I just want to make it formal’ so then I was appointed by the board and approved by the board. So yeah, it’s neat that you know that, you’ve done your homework!

Q: What’s something about you most ballet fans don’t know about?
 

Edge: Oh wow. Maybe that I’m a junior at Fordham University, getting a degree in arts administration, business minor. Maybe something like that. I guess that would be it, because you know dancers have different degrees of interests when it comes to scholastic pursuits. It’s something that I’ve always enjoyed and it’s slow going, cause I do sort of one course at a time. But it’s something that I love and I just want it to be in case I wanted to run a school or a company on my own I really wanted to learn about certain things from an administrative perspective and business too. I don’t know that I have a natural head for business at all. I guess that would be something. I’m a major animal lover. I play a little guitar, maybe those kinds of things.
 

Q: Any pets?
 

Edge: I had a dog, I had to put him down in February. I guess the average ballet-goer wouldn’t know any of that.
 

Q: What was a typical day like for you during ‘Phantom of the Opera?’

Edge: During ‘Phantom?’ It depends on if someone knew is going into the show or like this past week the choreographer was in town, she comes around like only once a year and so she tends to like to do a lot of rehearsals and is really specific about dramatic choices, you know spacing and things on stage. If she doesn’t like the way a certain scene is looking she’ll take that apart. But really on a daily basis, for someone knew going into the show, then we’re called in to rehearse with them, sort of run through the show with them. Otherwise it’s basically you go in Monday through Saturday night once and Wednesday and Saturday afternoon we do matinee. …The big difference between City Ballet and ‘Phantom’ in that respect is that you can’t make any plans when you’re at New York City Ballet you never know what your next rehearsal is or what your day is like. Pretty much during phantom you can plan your day. It feels a little more adult to me in that way. If somebody says, ‘Can we have lunch next week’ you can kind of say ‘Yes let’s do it on…’

Q: Very nine to five.

Edge: Yes. More predictable. But like, sometimes at City Ballet I’d have three nights off during the week. Phantom you got one, that’s the way it is. But I do work there on a part time basis, so then I balance my time off to go down to Longview and I was just down there teaching the kids and I do stuff like this.

Q: When were you last down there teaching?

Edge: For the first two weeks of October. To teach the kids to set ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ It’s exciting and I like being able to do my own projects and a bunch of different ‘Nutcrackers’ things like that.

Q: What dancers do you enjoy working with the most?

Edge: Wow, we’ve got a pretty great group here. [Laughs] They’re awesome. Yvonne (Borree, a NYCB principal dancer) and I are very close, Rachel (Rutherford) and I have a long history. I go down to spend time with her in Point Clear several times through the years. Daniel (Ulbricht, NYCB principal dancer) who was my partner in ‘Tarantella’ we’ve done lots of sort of outside gigs together, but this is a great group of dancers. I think traveling and performing with friends is a lot of the joy of it, and sharing with locals. I mean I learn so much of that from Longview (Ballet Theatre). Sharing with the local community and not just coming in and doing our thing and leaving; where we really integrate with the local students. I think that makes all the difference. It’s not about us coming in, because without the corps of swans you don’t have ‘Swan Lake.’ You know, each group of dancers I’ve gotten to dance with is special in their own way and getting to travel and perform with friends is the best.