“I FIRST met Christine Rocas about 12 years ago when I was asked to co-produce a fundraiser event for Typhoon Haiyan relief at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. I remember being completely entranced and mesmerized by her performance; a ballet dancer with so much power and grace, it was completely captivating (I mean, how many Filipino/Filipino-American ballet dancers are there from professional companies like the Joffrey?). Fast-forward 12 years, Christine announces her retirement from professional ballet in her final performance where she will have played the title role in Joffrey’s ‘Anna Karenina.’ True to form, Christine delivered a powerful performance, exploding on stage with the effortless strength and quiet fortitude, not unlike Tolstoy’s tragic heroine. There, amidst her fellow cast members and with her partner (in various pas de deux moves), Christine shined; not with the brilliance that accompanies jewels, but with a radiant dignity and superlative movement that belied her many years as a principal dancer with the Joffrey. She will most definitely be missed.” – Ted Benito, September 2024
When Ted Benito asked me to watch Anna Karenina, featuring Christine Rocas as the lead character, with his artists/friends at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion LA, I first said no.
He then explained who Rocas is, a principal ballerina, retiring after 20 years with Joffrey Ballet and before that mentored by Lisa Macuja Elizalde, artistic director and CEO of Ballet Manila, who congratulated her: ”Today, I had the privilege of watching our very own Christine Rocas in her final career performance in the role of Anna Karenina. Christine, you took my breath away! Bravo!”
I took my 9yo granddaughter with me to watch this ballet, #princess2015la, her pseudonym in this article. At that young age, she knew a pas de deux style: “Grandma, it is two people, dancing ballet together, as a couple.” I marveled at that answer. At 9yo, I was into multiplication and division and homework.
Ted’s loving feedback illustrates the respect and appreciation for Rocas’ transformation since 12 years ago, for she has achieved what she learned from Joffrey Ballet, an organization that puts the welfare of its dancers first. During the pandemic, Rocas shared how they all kept their jobs and how the cast kept up with practice, training, and even creating new works. She is especially indebted and grateful that they applied creativity in dancing in pods, and mindful of public health mandates, such that if they were living together, they can dance as partners.
Could this be the understated truth of the body of knowledge, sustained training, and her higher-level understanding of what goes on backstage? Let me walk you through this incredible discovery of a talent, multifaceted in emotional maturity, physical adeptness, intellectual smarts, and spiritual alignment.
“Christine is truly an artist, an amazing actor, and dancer that makes the audience feel emotional, watching her. I only got to dance several times with her, and she is an amazing partner and person. She builds great partnership with each one that she partners with. I think she modifies how she dances with that partner too. What else can you ask for? As a person that danced with Ballet Manila, she is Ate Christine, but now she is ballet master so, she is teacher Christine yet, she will always be Ate Christine in my mind! I’m happy and excited that she is our ballet master now, and passing on her magic to us!” –Hyuma Kiyosawa, Joffrey Ballet’s dancer, September 2024.
A ballerina defies not just gravity, but dances to a form that commands grace and strength. It is about body control where her hands and feet form geometric patterns and acquired spatial skills to know where she is at any moment on the dance stage. It is teaching a neutral spine to center, a line of balance for posture and anatomically correct placement. That kind of awareness, including how she responds emotionally onstage to her fellow cast of dancers and partners, is a result of conscious, diligent formation as a human: sensitive, considerate and selfless lack of ego, to inhabit the characters.
Christine Rocas has created magic in her 20 years. Dancing principal roles in ballet including Romeo and Juliet, The Nutcracker, Le Corsaire, La Bayadere, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, and Anna Karenina, Rocas has transitioned to interim Rehearsal Director/Coach of Joffrey Ballet in 2024 and now is part of Joffrey Ballet’s artistic leadership team. She can do more of her magic, transferring her skills and mentoring others to do their own magic, as well.
Onstage, we watched Christine Rocas give life to Anna Karenina, fell in love, and later, spurned by the man she loves, amidst the darkness of the train station, a metaphor perhaps of escaping the darkness of fascism in Russia in those times.
Her passion is displayed in her musicality and ability to discern the music tempo, and her dance moves, with such ferocity and precise adeptness, accentuated by the music, sung live by Lindsay Metzger, a mezzo soprano and with a full live orchestra.
“Music is number one in Ballet, if I see that music, my steps make chemistry – and this is what makes me happy,” as shared by Ukrainian born choreographer Yuri Possokhov with Joanne Divito, LA Dance Chronicle.
In my one-on-one interview with Rocas, amidst the clanking sounds of dishes brought to the table and cleared later at Yamashiro Restaurant, the conversation effortlessly unfolded. Lunch tab was picked up by Ted Benito, which included a young ballerina, Bridget Duffy, and her mom, Celina Taganas-Duffy.
Yes, and…respecting the sacred space
“More than her [Christine] achievements, it really warms a mother’s heart when people would approach me and say ‘you raised your daughter well,’ because that reflects her total person. Thank you for your interest in Christine. May God bless you!” – Mila Espina Rocas in a Facebook message sent to me, September 2024.
Her international award-winning husband, Philippe Quint, a classical Russian-American violin virtuoso, trained by Andrei Korsakov before immigrating to the U.S., to study at The Juilliard School and a lead performer in several concerts, enthusiastically shared:
“Sure Prosy. Talking about my wife is one of my most favorite topics. An extraordinary person and artist that I feel so blessed to have met. Christine is truly the embodiment of kindness, empathy, and generosity. Her unwavering compassion touches everyone she meets, and her ability to understand and support others is truly remarkable. She gives of herself freely, always putting others first, and her warm, loving spirit brightens the lives of those around her. As a wife, daughter, sister, and now the newly appointed Rehearsal Director at the Joffrey Ballet, she excels in everything she undertakes. I’m incredibly fortunate to share my life with such an extraordinary human.”
Can you feel the generosity of spirit in how Rocas is described by her mother, her husband, her dance partner, her mentor, and Ted?
Your body seems to be pliable, bendable silk or almost like liquid gel that performs well to form geometrically angular or straight lines – how did you achieve that body control down to the muscles that exhibit feelings, I asked Rocas?
Her husband, Philippe declared, before Christine could respond: “Amazing, you don’t get questions like this, it is both scientific and poetic.”
We all smiled, observing the rapport between this husband and wife, who are both creative artists.
Unperturbed and without losing composure, Christine answers with a depth of wisdom, of how vulnerability is created in sacred spaces of dancing, between partners.
She said: “I say it is about the same. Years and years of dedicated training. We spend a lot of time practicing so when the time comes that we are allowed to take liberty in a performance; the technique is there, it is solid and reliable. Years and years of dedicated training, [so] when the time comes to perform, the technique is solid and reliable. Muscles will do what it needs to do and it is always the work.”
She continues to share her acquired wisdom, a depth of spirituality, with emotional maturity, and is quite selfless in executing her dance moves.
“It is about time spent in rehearsal space, getting to know each other, making sure that the rehearsal space is sacred. There’s no vulnerability that can happen if the space is not safe. And vulnerability is required in order to express feelings with your partner. I said it to someone, at a donor’s event, what I am going to miss the most is the intimacy, where in the dance world, you can feel how a person loves another person, through characters, and be willing to open themselves up to another person, even with the guise of doing a character. But I am really honored to feel how other people love me even if it is about their loving the character – as we are all transforming. I almost experienced how my partners love their partner because in a way, art imitates life. I see the openness, I see the warmth, I see the vulnerability, I see the sensitivity they afford to their partners and they afford it to me. I want to make sure I take care of that. I want to make sure I continue to create that safe space for them – to continue to be open when I dance with them. You give me this stimuli and I give you this. I feel really open, but I think I am very fortunate to be dancing with friends. In dancing with people I don’t know, there could be inhibitions.”
For different partners, “It is not ever it does not work. It is just different. Find other ways to what that person is giving and you relate to that.”
She illustrates an example. “We have shared very intimate characters onstage, where he’s one of the people I feel safe to engage with [him] onstage. Even if we are exhausted, I am not giving up on him, he opens up himself to me, and I have to reciprocate. That‘s the exchange. That’s the conversation. That’s the art form.”
Philippe couldn’t stop appreciating his spouse: “You are focusing on the positive!”
She then concludes that part: “So I respond by yes, and…that’s the conversation.”
That was the mutuality of support and interactive conversation that the husband and wife were having, amidst all of us, listening to Rocas respond to the questions that I raised, including her husband’s.
It was magic to see Rocas respond positively to all the multiplicity of stimuli coming at her.
To which I said, “I sense your lack of ego – not self-conscious at all. Always immersed in the character, the work!”
When you listen to the reviews, several adjectives and descriptors were used, equally generous to mirror what they saw onstage:
“Mind-Boggling”
“Tears-Flowing”
“Woke up a sleepy 9yo to pay attention”
“Effortless beauty”
“Blissful onstage presence”
“Inhabits a role with pristine approach and exuberant lyricism.”
It is not surprising that Philippe, her husband, values the scientific and lyrical portrayals of Rocas’ dancing moves, especially the modern risk-taking, interpretation of Romeo and Juliet.
And interjects with his curiosity, he asked: “Her Juliet moves are miraculous, paying homage to Balanchine. She is always immersed in a character…very selfless to give to the character. Describe what it is like for you to be immersed in the character?”
Effortlessly, and with calm composure, Rocas engages what she knows about human relationships: “It’s not always about one person. If one person in the room is not as committed, then it can easily take you away, it’s a matter of teamwork. It is also responding to everyone’s moves, it’s really being active, you relate to everybody, you respond in the moment.”
Scientific in the sense that her hands extensions are extended or bent, always with grace or her spine aligned with her neck as her partner holds her downward, head towards the floor. Or that she can balance like an inverted tree branch, when held by Dylan Gutierrez in Beyond the Shore, or as she flies in the air in Jane Eyre. Lyrical in the beauty of her moves in pas de duex as Juliet, with Rory Hohenstein, as Romeo.
Cheryl Mann, Joffrey Ballet’s photographer, took these incredible feats of motion, capturing the emotional peaks of ballet moments, while Christine Rocas provided these images to me for publication.
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Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz, J.D. writes a column for Asian Journal, called “Rhizomes.” She has been writing for AJ Press for 12 years. She also contributes to Balikbayan Magazine. Her training and experiences are in science, food technology, law and community volunteerism for 4 decades. She holds a B.S. degree from the University of the Philippines, a law degree from Whittier College School of Law in California and a certificate on 21st Century Leadership from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has been a participant in NVM Writing Workshops taught by Prof. Peter Bacho for 4 years and Prof. Russell Leong. She has travelled to France, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Costa Rica, Mexico and over 22 national parks in the U.S., in her pursuit of love for nature and the arts.
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