MIDVALE — As soon as her teacher told her that she could be special — that she had what it took to be a great ballerina — Morgan Hastings took it from there. She was only 13 years old, but she heard those words and a routine began.
Three sets of 100 crunches before bed each night, along with three sets of 15 pushups. Lone weightlifting sessions and treadmill runs in the family basement. Meticulous notes made in a notebook about the mistakes she made in class each day. And then there were the four classes she took each week after school.
Hastings is 18 now and the predictions her teacher made years ago are coming to pass. A month ago she opened an email from the legendary Bolshoi Ballet Company inviting her to attend its academy for a year. At the end of the month she will fly to Moscow to begin her world-class tutelage with a company that was established in 1776.
“This is huge,” says Linda Fenton, Hastings’ longtime mentor and instructor. “There are only one or two dancers in the U.S. who get to go over there each year. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It will be a jumping-off place to go to a company. To have trained with the Bolshoi is the best thing she can have on her resume, especially at 18.”
It is Fenton, Hastings’ instructor since she was 6 years old, who foresaw great things for her student. Five years ago she pulled the girl aside after class one night. As Fenton recalls, “I told her, ‘You can do this; is it something you want to pursue?’ When she said 'yes,' I told her, ‘Then you have to listen to me,’ and she did. She got herself a notebook and wrote down everything I said when she got home each night and reviewed it before she came to class again.”
Fenton also warned her parents, Steve and Sharon Hastings: “Be prepared,” she told them. She’s going to do it. You need to be aware she’s that good.”
Still, no one was prepared for the Bolshoi email. The invitation blindsided Hastings. Only a few months ago she was attending classes at Hillcrest High School, graduating with a 4.0 GPA. She had accepted an invitation to train with Ballet West this fall while attending classes at the University of Utah.
After attending Ballet West’s Summer Intensive Program, she was urged by Fenton to audition for the Bolshoi’s annual six-week Summer Intensive Program in New York. Since auditions weren’t held in Salt Lake City, she and Fenton mailed a videotape of her performances. That won her an instant invitation to Bolshoi’s program, but because her audition was late, most of the spots had been filled. That meant she was able to attend only the last three weeks of the six-week program.
Hastings performed well in the intensive and received personal attention from instructors and major roles in performances. She was unaware that the intensive also served as an audition to attend the Bolshoi for a year. Two weeks after she returned to her home in Midvale — and one week before she was scheduled to begin university classes — she received the email.
“The email said they were impressed with my work ethic and my technique and they wanted to continue to work me,” she says. “I couldn’t believe it.”
Because scholarships had already been awarded to the students who attended all six weeks of the Intensive, Hastings will have to pay for the year at the Bolshoi at a cost of $2,700 a month. Between ballet classes with Ballet West, she has a part-time job to help defray costs, but most of the expense will be covered by her father, who retired in July. He is going to dip in retirement savings to pay for the year in Moscow.
It will be a sacrifice for Steve, but he chokes up when he says, “The Lord has blessed her with these talents, and she needs to use them."
Says Sharon, “We felt from the beginning this was an opportunity she needs to utilize.”
(Those wanting to donate money to help defray costs can do so at GoFundMe.com.)
Hastings is the youngest of six children and the third of four daughters who has excelled at dancing. By the age of 15 she was beating out college women for major roles in productions put on by Mountain West Ballet, a pre-professional company in Salt Lake City.
Hastings looks every bit the part of a ballerina, a lean 5-foot-6, 115-pound girl with square broad shoulders, ramrod straight posture and narrow hips. In ballet, she found self-expression — and therapy.
“It’s a beautiful art form,” she says. “I can express myself, and it’s a way to learn about myself, my strengths and weaknesses. And it was a way to release my emotions.”
Hastings battled depression in high school, just as her siblings and mother did before her. She avoided people and sought seclusion.
“I was anxious and hard on myself,” she recalls. “Nothing seemed to go right. I’m a perfectionist and expect a lot of myself. That drove the depression.”
She found relief through dance, as well as friends, but she also needed medication, and it took months of trial and error to find the right meds and the right dosage.
“It was so frustrating,” she says. “I didn’t want to rely on (medication), but nothing was working.”
Stable and happy again, Hastings has thrown herself into her art. Besides the bedtime exercises and the basement training routine, she takes two to three classes a day and stretches at home regularly, which she believes has kept her injury-free. She has surprising strength — she can do as many as 35 “man” pushups at a time. One of the Russian male dancers in New York told her, “You should be lifting the guys.” She also watches her diet carefully, eschewing soda and sugar, but she laughs when she adds, “I eat more than both of my parents combined."
A devout Mormon, she is aware of the pitfalls of the ballet world.
“That has been the hardest struggle for me,” she says. “(Dancing) is not the best world. There are auditions on Sunday and a lot of eating disorders and smoking and drugs to help with weight loss. But as I got older I realized I have come this far while keeping my standards. I can’t do this forever, and as long as I’m keeping my standards I’ll see how far it takes me.”
She thinks about this a moment and says, “I feel like I’ve put the Lord first in my list, and he has just opened doors for me.”
Email: drob@deseretnews.com