Chapter 5
Chapter Five
TAKE A WALK WITH JUSTIN WINTERS
Get to know the ANB principal dancer who can’t live without whole wheat pasta, regular bush walks, or his foam roller.
by Ivy Page
Most dancers have a love-hate relationship with the foam roller, and Justin Winters, 33, is no different. “It’s a pain in my backside, literally, but I can’t go a day without it. I shudder to think what kind of shape my body would be in if I wasn’t religious about foam rolling.”
Perhaps it’s thanks to the necessary evil that is his foam roller, but Winters is one of the rare and fortunate dancers whose career hasn’t been stalled or threatened by a serious injury.
He joined ANB at 18 and climbed the ranks steadily since then, culminating in a promotion to principal dancer five years ago.
Dancing at the company’s highest rank is a responsibility he takes seriously, and his pas de deux partners say that shows in how he handles them: with care.
“He handles you gently, but he also makes sure you feel steady and secure, which is a hard balance to strike,” says fellow principal Heather Hays. (That he always brushes his teeth and refreshes his antiperspirant before pas de deux rehearsal certainly doesn’t hurt, Hays “jokes.”)
Winters grew up in rural New South Wales, an only child in a close-knit extended family.
He followed his older cousin into ballet classes, where the teacher was struck by his feet, which were well-suited to classical ballet.
Those feet carried him through years of training at his local school, and to Sydney—and they’re still remarkable, the kind of high arches and strong, curved lines that aspiring dancers dream of.
And even though the in-born advantages that make for “good” ballet feet can leave dancers more vulnerable to injury, Winters has been spared so far.
When Winters isn’t rehearsing, he likes to escape the city to a place that reminds him of home. On a recent bushwalk in Garigal National Park, a short drive from his home in Crows Nest, he explained that when he first arrived in the city, he found the traffic and the noise surprisingly stressful.
“I couldn’t sleep at night, there was just so much light and noise.
After a few months I felt like I was losing my mind a bit, and one of the other dancers suggested I go for a long bushwalk, somewhere nice and quiet and away from it all, so I could hear myself think.
Now I do it once every few weeks, for my sanity.
” Winters has become a regular presence on the tracks in many of the national parks around Sydney, where he’s found a way to recharge and move his body gently at the end of a hard week of rehearsals.
He’s resisted joining a bushwalking group, however; it’s a solitary activity for him (though he did make a special exception for me, just this once).
Back in the bustle of the city, Winters’ schedule is packed: He’s rehearsing for the company’s long-awaited upcoming tour to New York, where he’s scheduled to dance “If Love,” a contemplative but devilishly difficult and complex contemporary work set to an excerpt from Philip Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach” and created by Nicola Pearson, one of many women choreographers Artistic Director Peter McGregor has commissioned since he took the helm of ANB.
It’s a pas de deux Hays describes as “all lifts all the time,” though there are also moments of sweeping side-by-side mirroring and small, reverent movements that demand the viewer’s close attention.
“If Love” is an audience favorite in Sydney, and Winters says he’s looking forward to bringing it to the hallowed stage at Lincoln Center, where the company will perform for a week next month.
It’s one of his favorites, too, for its deceptive simplicity.
Despite the difficult choreography and the lush, evocative music, the ballet has no sets and minimal costumes.
The woman dancer wears a leotard the color of a clear and cloudless sky, and her partner wears tights to match.
But it feels like ballet “at its purest,” Winters says.
“It’s a reminder that you don’t need a full orchestra and dozens of tutus, or even pointe shoes, to tell a story.
All you need is music and a few bodies, and you can create a whole world. ”
Winters fuels for his bushwalks almost as carefully as he fuels for his long days of class, rehearsal, and performance, with whole wheat pasta and lots of greens (“broccolini makes broccoli feel fancy, and less like… well, broccoli”).
He drinks alcohol sparingly and goes through several bottles of watered-down Gatorade a day—more when he’s going on a long walk on a hot day.
When he gets home from the bush, he’ll fuel up for the following day, and then stretch out with a little help from his foam roller.
And as for how he’ll recover from the 20-hour journey to New York? “I have a travel-size foam roller,” Winters assures me. “It’s always the first thing I pack.”
It hadn’t been easy to ask questions, think of smart follow-ups, and avoid tripping over a root and breaking an ankle all at the same time, but Ivy had done it.
She and Justin had spent two sweaty hours on a track in the national park, walking along the banks of the trickling creeks and clambering over fallen trees.
It wasn’t neutral territory—it was Justin’s place, and he knew it so well that he’d walked straight past the map at the start of the trail without bothering to glance at it—but that was even better.
He seemed relaxed out here, the way he did when she watched him in class and rehearsal.
Loose and jovial, with none of the guarded tension she’d become accustomed to.
She steered clear of questions about his past and focused instead on his present and his future.
Ivy had been surprised when he’d named the location, and even more shocked to discover that he was a regular out here.
A fellow bushwalker had recognized him on the track, and they’d stopped to chat briefly about the woman’s lower back, which had apparently been giving her trouble lately. Justin Winters was full of surprises.
But a bushwalk was perfect for PR purposes: it was quiet, solitary, and out in the bright sunshine.
Wholesome. The exact opposite of a pub crawl.
No chance of getting into a fistfight out here, just a slight possibility of passing out in the sweltering heat of the day, as the birds trilled overhead and fallen leaves crunched under their feet.
The track wove between the gumtrees, rocky and narrow, and on more than one occasion Ivy’s bare shoulder brushed against the side of Justin’s arm.
Eventually she let him walk in front of her, which made it easier to focus on the track and on her long list of questions instead of on the way her stomach fluttered when her skin brushed against his.
She’d felt it in the locker room the other day, when she’d barged in to find him shirtless, his pale skin still damp from class and glowing in the midday light.
She shouldn’t have been affected; she’d watched him dance in tights all week, and she knew he was lean and muscular, like all his colleagues, but good god.
Ivy knew from her own time in ballet that dancers were trained to find the tiniest imperfections in their own bodies and fixate on them until they were fixed.
She’s obsessed over her turnout, the arch of her upper back, the angle of her pinkie fingers when her arms were in high fifth.
Their bodies were constantly on display and constantly being compared to each other as every tiny flaw and imperfection stared back at them in the mirror.
But there were no flaws or imperfections in Justin Winters’ body.
She could not find a single thing she’d change.
His handsome, brooding face was one thing, but he was cut like a freaking statue, all shifting sinew and hard-won muscle under smooth-looking skin a dusting of golden-brown hair.
She thought about the barely-there costume for “If Love” and swallowed hard.
If Justin actually made it onto the plane, something told her it was going to be New York’s favorite ballet, too.
Ivy tried not to think about Justin shirtless, or about the skin of his back under his sweat-damp T-shirt, as he walked a meter in front of her and occasionally glanced over his shoulder to answer a question.
She told herself not to notice the graceful way he stepped over a fallen log, or the way his voice went wistful when he talked about how being out in the bush felt like going back home.
When she couldn’t stop herself from noticing, she told herself it was her job to notice.
She was a professionally observant person, after all, and all these details would make her story stronger, which would improve his image in the eyes of the company’s subscribers and donors and the press, which would make it more likely she could get him on the plane in barely ten days.
That was her job, she reminded herself, pinning her eyes to the track as it approached a creek that would eventually run into Sydney Harbour.
It was barely a trickle this time of year, but the water sparkled, and it looked cool and clear enough that Ivy had dearly wanted to stop and take her sneakers off to wade into it.
She didn’t suggest it, though. She wasn’t there to dip her toes in the creek or think about her colleague’s abs.
She was there to work, to get as many answers out of Justin as she could before he froze her out again.