LOWER Hutt ballerina Alayna Ng is sitting The Nutcracker out after she snapped her right knee, causing a serious hamstring injury.
“It’s a real shame that I’m not able to dance this last production. It’s Gary’s last season with the company. He hired me so I would have liked to have done this season for him.”
Ng landed badly from a cabriole fouetté jump in June during rehearsals for Carmen in Invercargill. Her knee collapsed inwards and, three months later – a “frustrating wait waiting for the paperwork to be done and the decision to be made” on the surgery, she had a total hamstring reconstruction.
“I was in shock. I didn’t even know what I’d done to myself – if I’d be able to come back to dancing.”
Injuries are common in ballet – the show is Adriana Harper’s comeback. She’s dancing the lead after a year-long injury hiatus.
Ng, 23, had surgery on September 7 and now, the slender “glass half full rather than glass half empty kind of girl” will watch the Royal New Zealand Ballet from the sidelines with five new scars. It’s four months since she’s danced ballet.
“It’s sometimes quite difficult to sit back and watch a show. It was really difficult when I first got injured. You don’t realise how injured you are and how you need to rest. It’s really hard to take a step back to slow down and let your body recover.”
But, as she says, the experience has been positive: she’s had the chance to explore new dimensions that she wouldn’t usually get to, like training in Pilates’ instruction and having long lunches with family and friends.
“I’ve been dancing since I was four years old. It’s the longest in my life ever that I’ve had a break from dancing. I’m enjoying the things that you don’t get to enjoy when you’re busy. I knit and sew – I’m knitting a blanket at the moment, it might become my injury memory blanket.”
And she’s learning how things look from an audience’s perspective too: audience’s reactions, and even how the new dancers, who she hasn’t yet seen in performance, look from the floor.
“It’s not the same when you watch them side stage or when you’re on stage.”
She glows with health. You wouldn’t know that this ballerina has been injured, aside from the scars seen as she stretches her leg out to show off where the cameras went in for the surgery. It’s all a conscious decision to be back dancing with the company by May.
“You learn that you can’t thrash your body. You have to learn to work more productively. I’m still young so I’m going to come back fighting and more determined. I’ve been doing everything by the book to make sure that I come back when I’m meant to.”
The Nutcracker, St James Theatre, October 29-November 6.