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ould you like to take class?" Paloma was asked one day. This was no ordinary
class, but an invitation to audition for a place in American Ballet Theatre--the
House Baryshnikov Renovated. "To be at ABT!" Paloma says. "Misha was always my
idol. I would watch him and Natalia and Gelsey Kirkland on TV." She took the
class, and ABT offered her a contract. "I was fifteen. I said yes."But there's a difference between a 15-year-old saying yes and her parents saying yes. Paloma placed her Don't Cry for Me Argentina phone call, trying to play it cool: "I said, 'Oh, I'm staying here.' Maybe they expected it, I was going so fast. But it was harder for them than for me." She lived with family friends in Queens and continued with an ever more relentless regimen, and with her rise to stardom. In just two years she was promoted to soloist. Her 1994 debut in Balanchine's difficult Theme and Variations caused a sensation. "Destined for prima ballerina," gushed Alice Helpern in Ballet Review. In a supreme compliment, the choreographer Twyla Tharp created a role for Paloma in How Near Heaven. And wasn't she? She was asked to dance the female lead in the great story ballet Don Quixote. In March 1995, Paloma was promoted to principal, the elite of ABT's elite. "No surprise to anyone who has been awed by her phenomenal abilities," wrote Susan Reiter in DanceView.
Then her work ethic betrayed her. Rehearsing the Tharp piece, she fell. Her hip hurt, but she was a dancer and used to pain. She kept on. The pain continued. Finally she had to take off several weeks. She found herself forced into an uncomfortable admission: "I was dancing too much."
