Chan Hon Goh making an elegant exit
By KATHLEEN M. SMITHThe Dance Current, May 2009
For a ballerina still dancing at the top of her game, "retirement" is a misleading term. So when twenty-year National Ballet of Canada veteran Chan Hon Goh gives her final regular season performance in Giselle, a matinee on May 31st, it will be both the beginning of the end and a whole new beginning. Goh will also learn and perform Peter Martins challenging Valse Triste for a National Ballet fundraising gala in June. And then, she says she starts a new life.
It will be a life with more than a few associations and connections to her old one. Born in Beijing, Goh moved with her family to Vancouver where she trained as part of the family business at the Goh Academy. Her father and mother were principal dancers with the National Ballet of China and are famed pedagogues and trainers on the international ballet scene. Although she was not initially encouraged to become a dancer (Goh concentrated on classical piano in her junior years), her stellar career seemed pre-destined. Goh joined The National Ballet of Canada in 1988 and quickly became a darling of audiences and critics.
A principal dancer with the company since 1994, Goh has been the most elegant of ballerinas, bringing delicacy and emotional depth to the big classical ballets along with a startling technical purity and, despite her tiny frame, significant strength. She cites one of her favorite compliments, delivered by a hero. Suzanne Farrell, the quintessential Balanchine ballerina and muse: "She said 'you're small, but you don't dance small.'"
It's true. The petite yet mighty Goh has impressed local dance buffs in The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, Giselle and Onegin. And she's had a parallel career as an international guest artist most notably performing principal roles with Suzanne Farrell Ballet between 2000 and 2006. Reflecting on what she'll miss most when she leaves The National, Goh says it'll be these larger-than-life characters she's danced over the years and, she continues, "the ability to live the lives of all these characters on stage, I anticipate feeling reminiscent when I hear the music in the future. These characters have been so intrinsic to my life." Intrinsic perhaps, but Goh's life has never been just about dancing the big classical roles.
For an elite athlete and artist, Goh has been remarkably successful at coming up with the requisite focus and commitment while at the same time nurturing a family running a ballet footwear design and manufacturing business with her husband, and producing large-scale dance events aimed at the wider arts and Chinese communities. Leaving The National will allow her to further explore these other endeavors. Interestingly, they all speak to Goh's desire to "give back", a gratitude for life-long blessings that have engendered a real sense of altruism and responsibility in this slender ambassador of dance.
The motivation behind her company - Principal Shoes - comes from having sustained multiple stress fractures to her feet early in her career and from watching other dancers similarly suffer. In an effort to find a better, more supportive shoe, Goh and her husband, former dance star, Chun Che, ended up designing one. "They are the only external thing we dancers depend on," she points out, "so they are very important." Goh and Che enlisted sports and biomechanics specialists to help with design and they have shared responsibilities - Che oversees design and manufacturing (the shoes are made in Asia) while Goh helps with marketing and promotion. The company has enjoyed success and modest growth and Goh looks forward to having the time to be even more involved with it.
Goh also is interested in delving more deeply into producing events such as A Chinese New Year Celebration with Chan Hon Goh, which took place at the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto earlier this year. Goh feels passionately about introducing ballet to more people and says she enjoys the challenge and detailed logistics of mounting special one-off events that can reach new audiences and educate them about the dance form she loves so much. With similar spirit, she's very interested in teaching, referring often to "the influential teachers who inspired the courage in me to believe in myself." Goh goes on to quote Einstein, who famously remarked: "You have to have the right conditions to succeed." Nowhere is this more the case than in the rarefied and tremendously competitive world of classical ballet and Goh knows it.
If her famous family was influential in her entrée into professional ballet, her immediate family is also a factor in her decision to leave full-time performing. Goh admits that the prospect of spending more time with her son, who is now three, is enticing and increasingly compelling. "I didn't know what effect motherhood would have on me," she admits. "I was the kind of person who never minded putting in extra time on my work. But now there's this toddler who deserves and needs my time as well. There's a constant feeling of attachment, of worry, I guess that tests me." Goh talks about the need to prioritize, to delegate and we agree that this is the universal struggle for those who live life to the fullest. As she bluntly puts it, "You don't want to give anything up."
Despite a nagging neck and shoulder injury that has haunted her final years as a ballerina, Goh feels she is saying good-bye at the height of her career rather than from some point along a decline. But clearly the fallout from a car accident she suffered in 2006 has made the daily body battles that every dancer must face even more of a challenge. "I have discomfort that just doesn't go away; it's constant." Three years after her accident, Goh is still taking time-consuming daily physiotherapy for injuries to her neck and upper body. It has definitely propelled her thoughts about leaving ballet and she says she has been discussing it with Artistic Director Karen Kain for about a year. This inability to bounce right back from fatigue or an injury has been a deciding factor, she agrees. And it's the great irony of the aging artist of the ballet: "just as you become the kind of artist you aspire to be; your body can't keep up."
Of her final performances with The National, Goh says she's trying not to think about how much they might sadden her. She worries, confiding that, "Emotionally, it might be too much for me." But she draws strength from the perennial task at hand and says simply, "I hope to dance well." As with any dance artist approaching any performance, this is truly the important thing. -
Chan Hon Goh gives her final performance in Giselle on May 31st at 7pm with The National Ballet of Canada at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts Toronto. She performs Peter Martins Valse Triste in The National Ballet of Canada fundraising gala, White Hot on June 18th at the Four Seasons Centre Toronto.