Jennifer Gelfand: Boston Ballet's Petite Powerhouse.

Boston Ballet's dazzling child prodigy comes of age with newfound artistic sensibility--and a real-estate license.

When Jennifer Gelfand takes the stage she does so with enormous presence. Known for dazzling turns, pyrotechnic leaps, and astonishing ballon, she devours the space around her. Watching the Boston Ballet principal dance, from audience of the jewel-box-like Wang Center in Boston's historic South End, you would never know the ballerina stands a mere five one.

"I have big feet," Gelfand deadpans with characteristic drollness. "I try to dance big. I'm not your stereotypical long-legged, hyperextended ballerina. I know some will say that I have been lucky and have a great career--and I agree. But I've still had to fight for the position I am in. I love to move, I love to dance, and that will always be what I'm doing out there."

But it's not just the scale of her dancing that has both admirers and critics raving. Gelfand, long known as Boston Ballet's child prodigy who could toss off such marvels as quadruple fouettes, is dancing with seemingly newfound artistic maturity. Fireworks have given way to plush, delicately nuanced performances. Her Swan Queen, a part she had to practically beg for, was lauded by a usually cool Boston press as "exquisite." Dance Magazine's Boston-based critic, Iris Fanger, raved about her Juliet: "The prize goes to Jennifer Gelfand."

Does she ever read her reviews? "Curiosity always gets the better of me," she admits. "If I based my career on reviews I would have quit a long time ago, but the past couple of years I have been very lucky with the press. But that's not why I dance; not everyone is going to like me and they're entitled to that."

Gelfand should know; for years she was routinely chastised by the press for technical prowess at the expense of expression. "It's really hard to step out of yourself and evaluate the validity of a review that says you lack expression. For me, I was feeling the emotions as I was dancing those ballets. It was hard to understand why the critics weren't seeing the same thing or feeling it. I've taken a fair amount of pounding, and while it does get to me sometimes, it doesn't get the better of me. I keep fighting back."

In person, Gelfand comes across as poised and self-assured, with a wry sense of humor. While she has a doll-like aura about her with her petite frame and luminous alabaster skin, she also has a deeply pragmatic, shrewd view of the sacrifices and politics of the ballet world. It's not surprising she was accepted by Harvard (which she deferred for obvious reasons), but it is a little jarring to learn she's just earned her realty license and is now a member of the Prudential Gibson Real Estate team.

"Well, I'm realistic," she says. "Ballet's a very short-lived career. I'm not going to be dancing when I'm forty years old and I'm going to have to be doing something. People still perceive ballerinas as stupid--well, just uneducated, to be a little more tactful. Education is important to me and I would like to pursue it when I stop dancing."

She describes real estate as another passion: "I've bought and sold some property over the past ten years here in the South End. It intrigues me, and it is something different. Ballet is such an isolated profession that it's nice to open the horizons a bit."

Gelfand began dancing at age three in Baltimore. She began her formal training at Boston Ballet School when she was six, studying with such teachers as Virginia Williams and Bruce Wells. In 1983 she received a grant from the David Howard Foundation to study with Mr. Howard. She also received scholarships from Boston Ballet School and the Harkness Foundation. She made her professional debut at the tender age of thirteen with the Eglevsky Ballet in The Nutcracker, dancing the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. At fourteen, coached by Howard during the summers, she won the gold medal at the International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi. From 1988 to 1989 she toured with the Joffrey II Dancers. "I always loved dancing," she says. "After winning Jackson, I realized I could make a living at it. But I never actually had this wonderful moment where I thought, `I'm going to be a ballerina.' I just love to dance, and haven't stopped yet."

Stardom arrived in 1989, a story that sounds like something out of Hollywood. Ballerina Laura Young was injured during a Boston Ballet performance of Don Quixote, dancing the role of Kitri with international star Fernando Bujones. Seventeen-year-old Gelfand, who had been tapped to dance Kitri later that week as a guest artist, was in the audience studying the staging. "I went backstage after the first act, not knowing anything was wrong," she says, "and I met Bruce Marks on the stairs. He said, `Laura's injured and you have to go on.' Fortunately, I had some pointe shoes in my dressing room. I ran downstairs, threw on the costume, pulled back my hair, put on my shoes, and winged it."

She laughs and continues. "Certainly, I had never danced with Fernando Bujones before. In every classical production, all the couples have their own little versions of pas de deux and things like that. But I wasn't even really thinking. I just knew what I had to do, knew I had to turn on a show for that audience--and I just did it."

Whirling, jumping, spinning, the adrenaline-charged Gelfand did the unheard of: a six-revolution pirouette, followed by a triple fouette--the ballet equivalent of figure skating's quadruple axel. The crowd went wild, dazzled by the young virtuosa. She raises one delicately arched eyebrow. "Needless to say, I was a bit tired the next morning."

Impressed by her courage and technique, Marks quickly signed Gelfand on as a soloist, thereby bypassing corps roles. She was promoted to principal in 1990, tackling roles as diverse as Princess Aurora in Anna-Marie Holmes's Sleeping Beauty, Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, Mercedes in Carmen, in addition to Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room, and Daniel Pelzig's Nine Songs by Lyle Lovett. In addition to her Boston work, she tours Europe, Asia, and Canada with the Montreal-based Le Gala des Etoiles, where her frequent partner is Jose Manuel Carreno of American Ballet Theatre.

In 1995 Gelfand left Boston Ballet for a year to guest with Birmingham Royal Ballet--a move that puzzled some in the dance world. But for Gelfand, it was time for a change. "I joined Boston Ballet when I was 17. I danced Juliet on my eighteenth birthday. When you join a company that young, you tend to become a little stagnant, because things are comfortable. I needed to see what else was out there, shake things up a little. It was time."

When she returned to Boston Ballet, roles were not forthcoming, although critics raved over her seemingly newfound artistic maturity. Gelfand is politic about this slack period: "When I came back, it was difficult at first to find my place in the company. I thought, `I'll come back right where I left off.' But it felt like I had to prove myself again.

"For example, I fought to do the Swan Queen for a long time. It took a lot of convincing, a lot of talk, and still at first glance in the studio I don't look like a Swan Queen. I've just tried to disprove that onstage."

What finally convinced the powers that be to cast her in the role? She laughs and shakes her head. "They were just sick of me, I guess. I hope that part of it is their trust in my ability to turn in a good and professional performance, even if it's not exactly the character or look they want specifically. If I do transform myself, that's even better. And fortunately I was lucky to get very nice reviews.

"I was focused on telling the story and portraying the role. Not to say that the technique wasn't important. But as I went through rehearsals and worked out versions, the approach was different. It's frustrating sometimes when people get so hell-bent on a straight leg here or a perfect foot there. In the scheme of things, I'm not saying that that's not important, but an audience doesn't leave the theaters saying, `Well, there was one moment when her leg wasn't perfectly straight.'"

Critics and audiences alike have been seeing a lot more of Gelfand in recent Boston Ballet seasons. In addition to Odile-Odette, she danced Giselle and Lucy in Ben Stevenson's Dracula, her Balanchine roles include the Sanguinic Variation in Balanchine's Four Temperaments, Divertimento No. 15, and Who Cares?

"People tease me because they think that I work too hard," she says. "I'm always nagging people to do the extra rehearsal. At the same time, I realize that there is a whole other world out there. I can't wait to go skiing again; I haven't skied since I was thirteen. I want to have the ability to start a new life and be able to get out of bed and not be crippled. Real estate, school--there are so many things out there. I don't think I'll be doing ballet ten years from now, which is also why I push to do so much now.

"At this point, how I dance is how I dance, and if I try to become someone that isn't me it's not going to read and it's not going to feel right. This is who I am, this is how I dance. Some people are going to like it and some people aren't. But I'm not going to apologize for it or try to be someone else. Take it or leave it.

"And maybe that's the change that people might see--that I'm going to use what I have and who I am and make the best of it. That was my approach for Swan Lake--not to be molded into how another dancer would do it. When it's comfortable and right for me, I think it's going to be comfortable for the audience. In my heart and soul it's who I am. That's the point I've reached."

Susan Elia is an associate editor for Dance Magazine and a freelance writer.