A star far away from home

They are used to seeing her in the Bangkok City Ballet’s annual productions but fans of Nutnaree “Ommi” Pipit-suksan were able to get up close and cosy with the Thai-born ballerina recently when she came back home briefly to appear in the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra Foundation’s special concert “Ballet Masterpieces with a Young Thai Master”.

Picked from the graduates of the Royal Ballet School in London and offered a soloist contract by the San Francisco Ballet, Ommi is one of the very rare dancers who hasn’t had to climb the long and hierarchical ladder of a professional company. She’s now the principal dancer at Silicon Valley Ballet (SVB), formerly known as Ballet San Jose. Along with her performance with Bangkok Symphony, she took time out to talk to major Thai media outlets.

“I don’t have a favourite choreographer – each is very different,” she says. “Each role becomes my favourite when I do it but I guess my real favourite is also one of the most challenging, Roland Petit’s ‘Carmen’. The character is not like me at all and that makes it difficult to sustain her character throughout the piece. The choreography is very cool and it’s very dramatic. I also enjoy the role of Cinderella, which comes very naturally to me, as well as contemporary works like ‘Glow Stop’ by Jorma Elo – very different, much fun and very fast – ‘Rush’ by Christopher Wheeldon and Yuri Zhukov’s ‘User’s Manual’.”

After eight years in San Francisco, she moved to Ballet San Jose, partly due to an injury which, on and off, kept her away from the stage for almost a year.

“Being very young at the time, I was being pushed too far too soon. But that was also a good turning point in my career as I spent time away from the ballet world and gained more perspective. I also realised that a dance career is quite short and at some point you have to move on to do something else. Dancing, then, wasn’t as much fun for me. I’m interested in teaching and a friend at Ballet San Jose suggested I audition there as the company also offers an American Ballet Theatre (ABT) teaching course.”

“Working in a smaller company is also more interesting. With bigger companies there are a lot of people ahead of you who always get the roles before you. The environment is also less competitive and more supportive. The repertoire of works for both are quite similar, with classical, neo-classical and contemporary works, but of course bigger companies, with more dancers, have higher numbers of works.

“Apart from dancing, teaching is my new passion. While dancing, I focus on myself; while teaching, on something else. I remove myself from the picture. Teaching is very different from dancing and ABT courses prepare you how to train, for example, dancers from young kids to adults. Stylistically, it’s a little different from what I studied at the Royal Ballet. Now that I’m teaching every weekend, I want to encourage people to have fun. And when they have fun, they’ll try harder. They don’t have to do each combination [of movements] perfectly but they have to enjoy themselves. That’s my main goal in teaching.”

A great number of dancers extend their time in the professional world by becoming choreographers and Ommi is no exception.

“I choreographed my solo piece for Bangkok City Ballet in 2013, and that was fun. I know what I’m good at so I choreograph accordingly. In the spring of 2014, I also choreographed a neo-classical ballet, set to Beyonce’s music, for my students at the Pacific Ballet Academy in Mountain View, California. That was fun too but, right now, I don’t think I have the capacity to be a good choreographer – maybe in the future. I’m also more interested in management and private coaching.” 

As for the future of ballet in her home country, Ommi says, “The problem in Thailand is the mentality that sees ballet as a hobby. Of course, you can start it as a hobby, and then you should develop it to something more, especially with the amount of money and energy people are putting into it. They just pass the certain levels of exams and then they quit – the certificates are put on the wall in their living rooms. As a ballerina, you don’t have to have a perfect body or a perfect turn-out – nobody’s perfect – to make it to the professional level.”

Ommi is leaving her doors to the future open, although many will be hoping that now that she’s enjoying teaching, she will return home to train future ballet dancers.

“Many people think that the peak for any ballerina is in her early 20s; that’s not true. It’s in the late 20s to early 30s because your body is mature enough to take on the workload, you know your body much better and you’re mature enough to portray different roles. I’d like to continue until my mid-30s,” she says.

“If I return to Thailand, and I’m not saying yes or no here, it has to be something big and for real like an academy to prepare dancers for a professional ballet company.”

The writer thanks BSOF’s Witaya Tumornsoontorn for all assistance.

 

On the Web: www.SiliconValleyBallet.org