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« on: May 02, 2007, 08:06:32 am » |
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Lupus Patient leaving Richmond Ballet, but their dance will continue Phillip Skaggs and Katherine Lynch have danced as partners just twice before with Richmond Ballet. Their final dance together, to "The Man I Love," will be at the Studio 3 series at 4 p.m. Sunday.Article Tools
They move around the sunlit kitchen like dancers . . . which isn't surprising because that's what they are. Phillip Skaggs, 28, and Katherine Lynch, 27, are professional dancers with Richmond Ballet. But today, their agenda is cooking, not choreography; gardening, not glissades.
Skaggs stands by the oven, his lanky but muscular 6-foot-3 frame just slightly slouched over a pan of eggs. Wearing jeans, a white T-shirt and bedroom slippers, he's stirring up an omelet for two. Lynch watches Skaggs closely, almost as a cat would a toy, ready to pounce when he's through with the spatula. Or a spoon. Or the cutting board. As soon as he lets something go, she washes it.
Reaching around him, on tiptoe -- she's 11½ inches shorter than her husband of nearly three years Lynch grabs a cheese grater, laughing. "Sometimes I have a bad habit of cleaning up things before Phil is done with them." He nods, grinning.
The easy give-and-take in the large, airy space is a culinary pas de deux that's been perfected over time. The couple's cooking routine might be set, but things are about to change in a big way. About a month ago, Lynch, partly for health reasons, announced her retirement. This week's Studio 3 will mark her last performances as a company member of Richmond Ballet.
Skaggs and Lynch, who still uses her maiden name professionally, came to ballet via decidedly different routes. Skaggs had done gymnastics and cheerleading but had no intention of going into dancing when he enrolled in a performing arts high school in Louisville, Ky. "I Forrest Gumped my way into ballet," he says with a laugh. "I walked my way in at the right place at the right time with the right teachers." In 1999, he says, "I went to a cattle call in New York City. Malcolm [Burn] was there, and I did the summer program at Richmond Ballet."
Burn is ballet master and associate artist for Richmond Ballet. When Skaggs arrived in Richmond, Lynch already had spent one year as a trainee with Richmond Ballet and was in her second year as apprentice. But her dancing "career" began at age 3. Her family moved to Annapolis, Md., when she was in first grade. From her first role as one of Mother Ginger's children in "The Nutcracker" with Ballet Theatre of Annapolis, young Katie knew what she wanted to do. "It sounds cheesy to say, but I was hooked. Anytime anyone asked me, I said I wanted to be a professional dancer." That summer of'99, when Lynch met Skaggs, "I definitely noticed him," she says. "He was actually my first real love."
What Skaggs didn't know when he met the dark-haired beauty with the infectious smile was what she'd been through her first year in Richmond. It started during her senior year in high school. Little things, really. "I'd be in the cafeteria and my hands would be cold," Lynch recalls. "They'd turn a little white or even a little blue, almost like I was losing circulation." One day, driving home from ballet class, her shoulder began hurting so badly she called her father, an orthopedic surgeon in Annapolis, who recommended anti-inflammatory medication. "I was severely allergic to it," says Lynch, "and ended up in the emergency room, which was a good thing. They had to do blood work and noticed something was off." What was "off" was that Lynch had lupus.
The tricky part about lupus, as Lynch quickly discovered, is . . . pretty much everything. "They still don't know what causes it, they don't have a cure, the symptoms vary from person to person. It's very frustrating." Diagnosed in 1997 with Raynaud's phenomenon, one of the many faces of lupus, Lynch was prescribed three medications that took a year to kick in. She never missed a performance, though. Even when her joints ached with so much arthritic-like pain that it hurt her to walk, even when her fingers turned so blue they were purple. "I never felt bad when I danced," she says. "I think the movement helped by keeping my joints active and in motion. "The doctor said it does seem you're trying to burn the candle at both ends. "But what if I had listened? Where would I be now?" Where she is now is at the top of her game, a professional whom her teacher and mentor Burn describes as the "ideal dancer." It's the quality that inspired legendary choreographer Jacques d'Amboise, when Richmond Ballet made its New York debut in 2005, to say of Lynch, "She has something special. She's extremely musical. "You can tell in her body she loves to move."
When the drugs kicked in and the flare-ups stopped, Lynch says, her lupus went into remission. "But when I do get an injury, I think my body has a longer healing time, which isn't ideal." That was something to consider, for example, when she had to have her left knee reconstructed -- twice -- once as an apprentice and again in 2003. "I do want to have children at some point," she adds, "so that's something to consider. "But this is my normal. It's hard for me to compare. . . . When I'm onstage, I don't feel a thing," says Lynch. "I'm loving it." Burn would agree: "You can't take your eyes off her," he says. "She dances with everything she has. She once told me, 'I always dance full out because I don't know if it's the last day I'll dance." When Lynch announced her plans to retire, she says, "Suddenly I felt amazing. Maybe it was relief. "A week later, I said, 'Phil, I made the wrong decision!' I'm still in the phase where I'm overwhelmed, sad, relieved, excited."
Part of the excitement comes from having signed up to work with Richmond Ballet's "Invitation to the Dance" program for children. Lynch will be an apprentice to Judy Jacob this summer, then begin teaching this fall. As Skaggs points out, the ballet isn't losing a dancer, it's gaining a teacher. There's not much time to be sad, really; Lynch and Skaggs will perform as guest artists with the Albano Ballet in Connecticut later this month, and Lynch will spend the summer babysitting for a local family. She is also looking into returning to school, perhaps something in health care. And then there are several projects at home. And scrapbooking. And cooking. And gardening. And . . . . But first, that final pas de deux with her life partner, who calls himself her No. 1 fan. When they dance to George Gershwin's evocative music in "Who Cares?" on Sunday, Lynch says, "I can't think of a better way to spend my last performance than with the 'The Man I Love.'"
www.LupusMCTD.com
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