Music Maestra!
The dancers didn’t know she was pregnant when Andrea Quinn first bounced onto the New York State Theater’s stage last season. The New York City Ballet’s future music director, trim, short-haired, and energetic, would run out for her bows, recalled principal dancer Jenifer Ringer, a touch of wonder still in her voice, and the dancers would say, “Take it easy. You can walk. We can wait.”
And they did. Quinn, a 35-year-old Briton, was supposed to take charge of the New York City Ballet orchestra during the winter season just passed. But, although she conducted a full schedule of works, the official appointment was put on hold until after the birth of her third child, Alfred, on April 30. Instead, Quinn stayed on tour with The Royal Ballet, her former company, until it finished a run in Boston, and then moved to the City Ballet for the Saratoga, New York, summer season.
As for the conductor herself, combining pregnancy with the physicality required on the podium and coordinating the music with a full company of dancers were of no great consequence. “I don’t notice it, to be honest,” she said, relaxing for a moment in colleague Hugo Fiorato’s dressing room after performances on January 13 of The Four Temperaments and Scotch Symphony. Pregnancy had made no difference to her career while she was carrying Katie, now 8, and Lucy, 6. “When i’m working, I don’t even think about it.”
Of greater moment, as far as both Andrea Quinn and the New York City Ballet are concerned, is the question of how this new music director–the first on-staff woman conductor of the NYCB orchestra–will interact with the company that Balanchine built.
So far, the results are all positive.
“Vivacity,” “energy,” “enthusiasm”: Members of the company responded to her with almost the same language. “What is most striking to me,” Ringer said, “is her vivacity, not only as a person, but as a conductor. She has so much energy and enthusiasm for what she does.”
