- Caroline Rocher of Lines Ballet rehearses on Friday, March 16, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Russell Yip, The ChronicleCaroline Rocher of Lines Ballet rehearses on Friday, March 16, 2012...
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Afternoon rehearsal is serious business in the Lines Ballet studios, where Alonzo King is working with the dancers on his lavish "Scheherazade" for the company's upcoming season at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Intensity and concentration are written across Keelan Whitmore's face as he works with the lovely Caroline Rocher. She gives a little shimmy that ripples from her hips to her shoulders, but then a smile begins to break out across Rocher's face. It's the first sign that they've hit a piece of the choreography that doesn't quite feel right and it also signals one of Rocher's more endearing qualities. Even when things aren't going perfectly, her outlook is always upbeat.
King comes over to help them push the partnering in a new direction, and when they repeat, there's a fearless spontaneity in her movement, even as she places each foot, each limb with surgical precision.The luminous Rocher joined Lines Ballet in 2007, arriving with an impressive resume of national and international credits. If at first she seemed a touch otherworldly, even tentative, in her approach to King's famously probing and challenging choreography, nevertheless, in the five seasons she's danced with the company she's imbued her performances with a rare warmth and intelligence and become a soulful and unpretentious interpreter of his work.
Born in France
Born in Saint-Etienne near Lyon, France, Rocher received her early dance training from Veronique Claparede at the Conservatoire Regional de Montpellier.
"Honestly, I never thought I would make dance my career," the chic Rocher says later over tea at Café Gratitude, adding frankly that she didn't feel that she fit the ballerina profile. "I've always been curvy, and well, look, when you're in France, your model is the Paris Opera Ballet. I could see I didn't look like that."
Still, her teacher pushed her to audition for choreographer Maurice Béjart's Rudra Béjart School in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she studied for two years. After graduating, Rocher's career path took a glamorous turn when she went to dance for the famous Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris.
"I always was attracted to bling and glitter," she says with disarming frankness. "I still am, I love it! The Rudra school was doing a performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, which was right around the corner from the Crazy Horse, so I thought why not try it? I auditioned and I got in. For a year and a half, I lived like a princess in Paris. It was fun, and you're treated very well. It's like a Broadway show or Las Vegas." Eight shows a week
Even so, after doing eight shows a week for a while, Rocher felt a need for more variety and decided she wanted to try her luck in New York. She had watched "Fame" on French television and felt the pull of the Big Apple.
"So I packed up my courage and two suitcases and I made the move. Years later I met Debbie Allen backstage at a performance Lines did at the Joyce Theater in New York," she recounts, "and I told her, you're one of the reasons why I came here!"
As a student in Lausanne, Rocher had worked with Alvin Ailey's Denise Jefferson, so when she first landed in America, she tried the Ailey school for six months, but found that modern dance wasn't the right fit for her.
"For me, deep down I just wanted to do more classical ballet," she says simply.
So at 21, she joined Dance Theatre of Harlem, swiftly rising to the level of principal and dancing everything from Balanchine to "Creole Giselle" to Michael Smuin's "St. Louis Woman."
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