Last year, ballet dancer Sarah Hay got a cold, hard welcome when she stepped into a dance class in New York for training.
“None of the girls said hello to me,” says Hay, 28. “They just looked at me and made these faces of disapproval. I heard one of them say, ‘What the hell is she doing here?’”
What they didn’t know was that she wasn’t there to steal the spotlight. The truth was far sweeter: Hay was there to prepare for her part in the new Starz channel drama “Flesh and Bone,” a savagely addictive new series that debuted all eight episodes on Nov. 8. The show joins a resurgence of ballet-inspired film, television and fashion and now that the holiday season is officially upon us, a blizzard of “The Nutcracker” performances.
“Everything goes in and out of style,” Hay says. “[Ballet] is sort of a dying art form. There’s so much weirdness about it people don’t really understand.”
But “Flesh and Bone” isn’t quite sugarplums and fairies. Among its creators are former “Breaking Bad” writer and producer Moira Walley-Beckett and longtime Quentin Tarantino collaborator Lawrence Bender. They’ve filled the cast with real dancers whose characters bite at each other’s backs in this dark and delicious drama.
Hay appeared as a dancer in 2010’s “Black Swan,” but she was plucked for this leading role while working in her sixth season with the Semperoper Dresden, the German company where she still dances. Producers had already auditioned over a thousand girls when Hay got an email from Ethan Stiefel, the show’s choreographer. After sending footage, she was invited to New York. One hour after her audition, she got the gig. “It’s my first acting job,” she says. “It’s really crazy.”
Hay plays Claire, an ostensibly meek dancer from Pittsburgh trying to work her way into the dance scene in New York City. “I’d say 100 percent of it is real. It’s just that it’s a drama, so it’s portrayed more intensely, but I’ve seen things happen that you wouldn’t believe,” she says. “People get so hung up in their egos . . . and they take it out on people.”
It’s no wonder the competition is so tough, on-screen and off. “Eight hours in front of a mirror all day can make you either crazy or crazy,” says Hay. It makes the series’ theme song — a haunting cover by Karen O of the ’80s hit “Obsession” — all the more striking. “If you don’t have a personal life, that obsession is real,” she says.
The issue is that ballet “is a perfectionist’s art form,” says Hay, who does an hour of yoga before dancing eight hours a day. “One millimeter can make a difference. You can’t slip up or else you’re easily replaceable. There are just so many people who want the same thing as you.”
And the battle to beat the others begins young. Hay herself started dancing at age 3 in Princeton, NJ, where she was raised with an older brother and sister by psychologist parents. While her father was skeptical, her mother, a huge ballet fan, saw potential. At 8, Hay enrolled in New York City’s School of American Ballet. The transition wasn’t easy. “I was really popular at normal school,” says Hay, but “I was kind of a loser at ballet school. It’s all rich kids, and I was not a wealthy kid. I didn’t have the Chanel butterfly clip everyone else did.”
Ultimately, though, Hay was her own barrier to success. “I was a big-time troublemaker,” she says. It wasn’t until well into her teenage years that she finally got serious, sacrificing everything for her art. “I’ve had a few relationships fall apart because of it,” she says. “I tend to be . . . they say ‘workaholic,’ which I just find to be ‘motivated.’ ”
But just as she was finally following the rules, her body was breaking them. “I had a lot of controversy about my figure,” says Hay, who is a size 0 on bottom and a DD on top, making for a figure so curvy, it doesn’t fit the typical mold for a dancer. One teacher even pulled her offstage during a production, handed her a sports bra and said, “Your breasts are distracting me.” Hay was crushed. Some suggested she get a breast reduction.
“I like my body. I don’t want to have to change it for anything — even if that means I have to take a step down as a dancer,” she says. “I don’t think I’m ever going to sacrifice my figure for anyone else to accept me.” So since she couldn’t beat the New York scene, she looked to join another. At 22, she found one in Dresden, where the ballet director encouraged her as an artist. “I was always ‘the fat girl’ or ‘the heavy girl.’ My career skyrocketed from him just believing in me.”
Hay has been her real self ever since — with a fashion sense that reveals her rebel heart. Because she spends so much time wearing tiaras and tutus, she eschews overtly girlie trends. “Floral headbands — I can’t,” she says. “I envision that more like a costume.”
Her style is a little grungy, a little hobo, full of secondhand items she picks up in stores like Beacon’s Closet in Brooklyn. Today she’s in a black oversize vintage T-shirt from the punk band the Huntingtons, worn over ripped black Topshop skinny jeans and black Vagabond oxford-style booties. “I like vintage clothes, a lot of ’80s band shirts. I wear a lot of my boyfriend’s clothes too.” (Hay’s currently dating an actor she met in Germany five years ago.)
She wears a lot of black and chooses bigger, baggier items on purpose: Because she’s next to naked all day, being judged about her body, in her downtime, “I prefer to be covered,” she says. “I don’t wear a lot of low-cut things. I’d rather keep the attention to my brain, my face.”
Hay was back in Germany dancing the ballet “Manon” in November. She may return to the States in a few years, but until then, she comes back to New York two or three times a year for a dose of sushi on St. Marks Place, a ride on the 1 train (her former route to ballet school at Lincoln Center) and some Yoga to the People classes. “I’m confused about my future,” she admits. “I just have to ground myself and say, ‘Take it one day at a time.’ ” She has big dreams, though. In her ideal scenario, “Quentin Tarantino would say he’d like me to be the next femme fatale in his movie,” she says.
Acting suits her. In fact, watching herself in “Flesh and Bone” has been far easier than watching herself dance. “I guess,” she says, “it’s because I’m so much more involved in dance, and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong with acting. I’m not like, ‘That tear could have gone a little longer on that side.’”
And for a perfectionist, the ability to let go has been bliss. “For once,” says Hay, “I’m blindly enjoying myself.”
Photos by Don Flood
Fashion editor: Serena French; Stylist: Anahita Moussavian Makeup by: Danielle Decker/JK Artists using MAC Cosmetics Hair by: Christian Marc Represented by: Forward Artists using Leonor Greyl
Fashion credits for top photo: Dress, $8,990 at Valentino 693 Fifth Ave.
Fashion credits for second photo: (Left) Feather cami, $425 and skirt, $595 both at tibi.com (Right) Cocktail dress, $6,690 at Oscar de la Renta, 772 Madison Ave.; 18-k gold ring with diamonds, $1,600 at Tiffany & Co., 727 Fifth Ave.; 18-k white gold ear jacket with diamonds, $3,960 at simongjewelry.com
Fashion credits for third photo: (Left) Crystal-embroidered top with skirt, price upon request at marchesa.com (Right) Tulle dress, $9,800 at Dennis Basso, 825 Madison Ave.; 18-k white gold ear jacket with diamonds, $3,960 at simongjewelry.com
Fashion credits for fourth photo: (Right) Dress, $2,600 at delpozo.com; 18-k white gold ring with diamonds, $3,200 at grazielagems.com