The Long Voyage Home

His thoughts are of home.He feels as if he has been heading toward it for ages. He has faced obstacle after obstacle, each one seeming to be the last before he could reach that place of rest and fulfillment, but always more and more trials have erupted in its place. He is weary, bone weary, from the journey, but he will not stop. He must reach home.

On this Thursday in late February, in this second-story studio of Ballet Austin, these thoughts could belong to the title character of the new ballet being rehearsed there or to the man creating that ballet. In the case of the former, the longing for home is an intrinsic part of his character; it is at the heart of his story. He is Ulysses, the ancient Greek warrior whose return home from the Trojan War covered many miles and many years. As recounted in Homer's epic poem The Odyssey, Ulysses' voyage back to Itháki, where his wife Penelope and son Telemachus steadfastly waited for him, was a protacted series of detours and delays, each threatening with danger or desire to detain the warrior forever ó think of it as the Evening Commute From Hell.

In his return to the bosom of his family, however, Ulysses would not be deterred. Though a delay in his journey might last seven years, as it did when he was stranded on the island of the nymph Calypso, though he might be seduced by the love of another, as he was when he met the maiden Nausicaa, though keeping on his journey might mean defying sorceresses, monsters, even the gods themselves, Ulysses kept to his course. He was driven to do so by thoughts of home.

In the case of the latter figure, while such thoughts may not be so bound up in the essence of his character, in this studio on this day they are just as prominent in his mind. He is Ballet Austin artistic director Lambros Lambrou, and his Ulysses puts him much in mind of his native land, Cyprus. The story he is retelling is part of the world he came from and telling it immerses him once more in the warm Mediterranean waters he knew in his youth, steeps him in the culture of ancient Greece that left its mark so indelibly on Cypriot shores (it was at Cyprus that the goddess Aphrodite is said to have risen from the waves). Moreover, Lambrou has chosen as his partner in this enterprise a fellow countryman, composer Michael Cristodoulides. The score to this original full-length ballet of Lambrou's will pulse to the beat of a Cypriot heart.

Lambrou's current absorption in his homeland is readily apparent this Thursday afternoon. You can see it from across the room. Literally. The T-shirt he wears is emblazoned with the name "Cyprus" in big black capital letters, around which are set images of ancient Greek ruins. As he stands before a quartet of his dancers, talking through a new section of choreography (that he has only just set because the section of the score on which it is based arrived only this morning), the shirt hangs on Lambrou in a way that makes it appear much heavier than it is. And so for a moment it's weighted with symbolism: Like Ulysses, the choreographer is wrapped in an image of home, an image that is visible to all and of which he is always aware. At times it may be a burden, pulling him down, but he presses on, bearing it no matter what obstacles he may face.

Symbolic T-shirts aside, Lambrou has certainly faced his share of obstacles in getting this ballet to the stage. The process of working with a composer an ocean away has subjected the production process to a frustrating series of delays. Direct communication between the collaborators has always had to wait for the difference in time zones to line up a certain way (not too late here, not too early there, or vice versa). Actual tapes of the music had to be conveyed from composer to choreographer via express mail services, which commonly took a couple of days to carry material between Cristodoulides' home in Athens and Austin. And the fact that the composer has been bumping up against deadlines for finishing the score hasn't made the process any less complicated. Music for Ulysses has flown into Austin in pieces, the confrontation with the Cyclops here, the victory dance at Troy there. The segment that arrived the morning of the 26th concerned Ulysses' meeting with Nausicaa, so that, just eight days before the work's world premiere the choreographer was able to set this pivotal moment of romance on these characters.

Lambrou finishes his discussion with the dancers and sinks into a chair to watch them run through the segment again. Again, there is the sense of a weight on him, and the toll of carrying it is evident. He can manage a welcoming smile for the journalist come to witness a rehearsal, but he can't disguise the fatigue in his eyes or in the drained slope of his shoulders. This is one worn choroegrapher. Nevertheless, he is pressing on. He won't be sailing into Cyprus with this production in eight days, but there is a kind of home port in the opening night at Bass Concert Hall, and Lambrou is as intent on reaching that harbor as Ulysses is on reaching Itháki. (In a sense, though, Cyprus will be in the hall that night; representatives of the Cypriot government, which is helping to sponsor the production, are traveling to Austin for the premiere and will be in attendance.)

The dancers start to play out the portion of the story they have been discussing with Lambrou, and as I watch them I am struck by the intensity of their efforts. Dancing the role of Nausicaa, Vlada Chtcheberiako arches her body toward Rafael Padilla's Ulysses with a straining passion, and he raises his desperately weary eyes to watch her with wonder. This is no "let's see if we can hit the marks" run-through. It is an immersion in this story, a drowning in its drama, an attempt to live it even in a second-floor rehearsal hall.

And when that scene is finished and the run-through begins, that feeling is reinforced. It is late in the day on a day late in the week, and these dancers have been traveled many miles already. They don't have the benefit of costumes or all the props that will assist them in creating the illusion, but they dive into this Odyssey and become lost in it and what is visible is the exuberance of the triumphant warriors at Troy, slapping the ground and slicing the sky with their bodies, the rage of Poseidon stomping the sea floor and stirring up the deadly turbulence of waves and storms with his spins, the grace and sensuality of Calypso, her smooth, undulating gestures providing an irresistible lure. Complete or not, it's an impressive performance, one that reveals these artists' great faith in the material. It's as if they too find some thought of home in it and, like the hero of the tale and the leader of their company, are driven to reach it.

It's a funny thing about this idea of home. It can be many things: a spot on a map, wherever you hang your hat, the end of a long and winding road, your better half, a place inside you where you find peace and renewal. And it can change over time. Knowing of this project's many connections to Lambrou's native land and of the ways he has built bridges back there in the last few years ó taking Ballet Austin to perform there in 1994, returning the last three summers to lead the International Summer Dance Intensive there ó I ask him if Cyprus still feels like home.

"Home is..." He starts to reply, then pauses. "I left when I was 17 and pretty much pulled all my roots then, when I was a crazy teenager," he says after much thought. "I've lived in England and Canada and now here, so it's a different kind of home. A large portion of my soul resides permanently in Cyprus, and it reveals itself through my work here. But here is my physical home, and my extended family lives here, and my aches and pains and the good, the bad, and the ugly. Austin is home now, and it's been a wonderful island for me, an artistic island. A good community, good people, unafraid to take on at times seemingly insane projects like this."

In the course of our life, we may have many homes, in many forms and in many places. But no matter where we are or when, we'll have something that we think of as home, and like Ulysses and Lambros Lambrou, we'll be driven to get back to it. After all, as another traveler who found herself far from that place discovered, "There's no place like home."

---

Ulysses runs Mar 6-8, Fri-Sun, in the Bass Concert Hall on the UT campus. Call 476-2163 for info.