San Francisco Ballet dancer Lleyton Ho didn’t have to use much imagination to play a frantic university student studying anatomy with Victor Frankenstein.
For the company’s spring production of “Frankenstein,” a modern ballet adaptation of the classic Mary Shelley novel, the stage at the War Memorial Opera House was transformed into an old-time operating theater. Ho was one of the “the students on the side freaking out,” he said, as their professor, played by another dancer, inserted probes into a fake corpse to see if electricity reanimates a dead body.
While Ho received compliments for the “realistic” way he portrayed terror, he had been that overwhelmed undergraduate in real life, trying to keep up with demanding economics classes at Stanford University, while simultaneously dancing during a 46-week season as a member of San Francisco’s corps de ballet.
“That’s really kind of funny for me to have to do that on stage, because there were definitely a few times where I left a lecture, and I was like, ‘Oh God, I don’t even know what just happened,” Ho said.
On Sunday, the 24-year-old New York native received his diploma from Stanford, capping an intense, years-long balancing act: Studying at one of America’s most selective universities while giving his all to one of the world’s premier dance companies.
During the school year, Ho raced back and forth geographically and mentally between Palo Alto and San Francisco. Through carefully calibrated scheduling and time management, he fit in lectures, papers and finals around hours of daily dance workouts, rehearsals and performances at the Opera House.
Ho sometimes didn’t sleep much, and he didn’t have much of a social life. But, as a high school senior, he received two amazing opportunities: Go to Stanford or join the San Francisco Ballet. Just one of those opportunities would have been enough for any regular high-achiever, but Ho decided to do both.
During the week before his June 15 graduation, Ho enjoyed a rare week, the first in years, when he didn’t have to worry about school or dance. He had turned in his last paper the week before, and the company’s season had finished in May.
In the company’s rehearsal studio, Ho demonstrated one of the jumps he had worked to perfect since age 9. For a cabriole side, he took flight and, for a mili-second, he created a perfect human line in the air, with his two legs knifed together to one side and his left arm raised to the other at a precise angle. Ho made it look easy while wearing an expression of pure pleasure, showing why he worked all these years to earn a spot in “the SFB.”
For serious dancers, performing for the SFB, even as corps member, is a high achievement, perhaps akin in sports to being on a Super Bowl-winning NFL team. Founded in 1933, the Bay Area company is the oldest professional ballet company in the United States and ranks among the world’s top 10 companies, along with the Bolshoi, the Royal, the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre.
Ho’s path to San Francisco began as a young gymnast in suburban New York who aspired to compete in the Olympics. While recovering from a wrist injury, his coach suggested he take a ballet class. “Initially, I was a little hesitant, but I realized I connected with the movement a lot more than I did with gymnastics,” he said.
Ho first studied at the School of American Ballet, founded by George Balanchine. At 16, he auditioned for an SFB summer intensive program. Then-director Patrick Armand invited Ho to join the company’s demanding trainee program, which prepares artists to work professionally. Ho, in turn, was excited to work with Armand, who was particularly adept at training male dancers in their difficult athletic moves.
For the next two years, Ho lived with about 25 other young dancers in housing near the Opera House. He attended daily classes in technique, choreography and stagecraft while finishing high school online. During his senior year, which coincided with the 2018-2019 ballet season, he looked forward to getting his first professional job but still applied to Stanford and other colleges in case dance didn’t work out.
Things got complicated when then-Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson offered Ho a contract to apprentice for the 2019-2020 season, while Stanford sent him an acceptance letter. He decided to defer admission to Stanford for a year so he could seize this once-in-a-lifetime chance to star his dance career.
But the COVID-19 pandemic ended Ho’s first professional season prematurely. With no one knowing when – or if – the company would ever perform again, Ho enrolled at Stanford for the fall of 2020 and studied remotely. The following year, he then took a leave of absence to focus on dance after he was promoted to corps de ballet and the company returned with a full season.
But Ho soon realized he had a decision to make. “If I give up ballet, I know I will regret it. If I give up Stanford, there’s a high likelihood that I would regret it as well,” he said. “I was, like, the scheduling is going to be crazy interesting. It’s definitely going to push me to the brink. But if it’s possible, I want to give it a try.”
The work season for a San Francisco Ballet dancer usually begins in July, then ramps up during the performance season that from runs from December to May, with dancers expected to be in class and rehearsals all day, then doing shows Tuesday through Sunday, going as late as 10 p.m.
For Stanford, Ho signed up for all Monday lectures or 8:30 a.m. classes so he could be back in San Francisco by the late morning. He took advantage of shows when he didn’t have to dance much to do homework backstage. Meanwhile, he chose to major in economics because it’s “versatile” but he also discovered a love for “nerding out” over econometrics and statistics.
This past season, he was thrilled to perform in “Frankenstein,” and he got his first chance to dance all by himself on the vast Opera House stage while performing in the aptly titled, three-man modern ballet piece, “Solo,” by Dutch master choreographer Hans van Manen.
Ho would love more solo opportunities or to work with other exciting new choreographers, though his aim is to “just dance to the best of my ability.” He knows that a career in dance, as in sports, can only last so long, so he’s grateful for his Stanford degree, thinking he could one day work for a dance company and perhaps use to his training to analyze and boost audience numbers.
Meanwhile, he’s contemplating a more immediate future when, for the first time since middle school, he’s not juggling school and dance. “What I have to wrap my head around is that I’m so used to going home after a performance and being like ‘What assignment do I have to do?’ Now I suddenly have a ton more free time that I used to have.”