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It was Isaac Hernández’s second week at American Ballet Theater, and he was feeling achy from rehearsals. But as soon as the pianist began to play, his body and eyes snapped to attention. It was his big entrance. He rushed across the studio in series of jumps, legs thwacking together in the air. He turned with one leg extended to the side. He did a circle of leaps that almost brushed the walls. He made the space feel small.
“Amazing,” exclaimed the ballet coach Irina Kolpakova, in Russian-inflected English, her arms and eyes opening wide. “You make me very glad.” As Hernández stood in front of her panting, he broke into a broad smile. “My mood is improving,” he said.
Since September, Hernández, 34, has been preparing for his Ballet Theater debut during its fall season, which begins on Wednesday and goes through Nov. 3 at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. That has meant working closely with Kolpakova, 91, a former Kirov star, in rehearsals that focus on intention and movement quality. At one point she placed his hand on her rib cage to show exactly what a position should feel like. He immediately recreated the shape in his own body.
Hernández is a smart dancer, quick to take in information. But with his confidence, skillful partnering and matinee-idol looks, he is also a throwback to an earlier generation of male dancers at Ballet Theater, many of Latin American or Spanish extraction, whose swashbuckling stage presence was often as celebrated as their dancing. (The list includes José Manuel Carreño, Ángel Corella and Fernando Bujones.)
Hernández, who is from Guadalajara, Mexico, is already a veteran of top companies, including English National Ballet and San Francisco Ballet, which he left in May. So this summer when he approached Susan Jaffe, Ballet Theater’s artistic director, about joining the company, she jumped.
“I thought, Wow, this is miraculously perfect,” Jaffe said. “His style, his energy, his technique, his grasp of theatricality. There it is — he has it all.” He will start as a guest in the fall season, dancing in “Études” and as Solor in an excerpt from “La Bayadère,” before joining the company full time in January.
Jaffe said that Hernández filled a need at Ballet Theater. “We have a lot of brilliant principal male dancers,” she said, “but not all of them will now be dancing roles like Solor,” one of the most technically challenging in the repertoire. “And then we have younger dancers who are not quite ready.”
The company is performing the dream sequence from “Bayadère,” “Kingdom of the Shades,” a pure-dance passage considered a pinnacle of Russian 19th-century classicism, which calls for an elegant but highly virtuosic style. It also demands impeccable partnering.
Hernández honed his partnering skill partly by working with experienced ballerinas like Alina Cojocaru and Tamara Rojo at English National Ballet, where he spent seven years. It was Rojo, then the English company’s artistic director, who brought him over from Amsterdam, where he had been dancing with the Dutch National Ballet.
Eventually Rojo became his life partner as well. The revelation of their relationship caused waves in the ballet world, and questions about Rojo’s leadership, which both the company and the couple were able to overcome. In 2021 they had a son, Mateo, and the next year, when Rojo accepted the artistic directorship at San Francisco Ballet, Hernández went too. Among other things, he said he was glad to be close to his brother Esteban, also a principal in San Francisco.
But this year, when the time came to renew his contract, Hernández felt it was time to move on, he said, “for both personal reasons as well as timing.” He and Rojo have split, he said, though they continue to co-parent Mateo from opposite coasts.
And Hernández is ambitious: “I wanted to make my career my priority again. I have a sense of duty to my career, to my father, to my teachers, to really fulfill my potential.”
His career trajectory reflects that drive. Growing up in Guadalajara as one of 11 siblings, he took ballet lessons at a makeshift ballet barre in his family’s backyard under the guidance of his father, Héctor Hernández, a former dancer with Dance Theater of Harlem and Houston Ballet. At 12, Isaac began taking part in international competitions, soon ending up at the Rock School in Philadelphia.
“I have been kind of by myself ever since,” he said. After a year with Ballet Theater’s junior company in 2007, he left for San Francisco, for his first of two stints in that company. Four years later, when he felt he was beginning to stagnate, he moved on to Dutch National Ballet, where he rose to the rank of principal.
Then came English National Ballet, where he was involved in the creation of works like Akram Khan’s contemporary “Giselle” and Rojo’s reimagined “Raymonda.” “For a long time,” Hernández said, “my priority has been working for Tamara’s artistic vision. It felt incredibly meaningful to be able to do that together.”
Now, he said, he felt he needed a change. “I’ve been really eager to challenge myself,” he said, “put myself in really difficult situations to see what I’m capable of.”
Those difficult situations include taking his first steps as an actor. He was in Carlos Saura’s film “King of the Whole World,” and had an important role in “Someone Has to Die,” a series on Netflix, for which he had to do a nude scene. “It was on my first day on the set,” he said. “I think they thought it would break the ice.” Last year he filmed a love story with Jessica Chastain, “Dreams,” likely to be released next year.
He hasn’t forgotten about the difficulties of growing up without great means. For the past 10 years, Soul Arts, the production company in Mexico created by Hernández with his brother Esteban and his sister Emilia, has produced the international dance festival Despertares, or Awakenings. “Everyone kept telling me that no one liked ballet in Mexico,” he said. “Now we hold it in a 10,000-seat venue.”
The organization also arranges auditions, free of charge, where aspiring Mexican dancers can exhibit their skills for international schools and companies.
For the last few weeks, though, Hernández has focused on his Ballet Theater debut, working with coaches there, especially Kolpakova.
“When someone like Irina shows you something,” he said, “it’s like opening a history book and seeing the intention, the meaning. It reminds me of a very old version of dance, incredibly beautiful in its essence.”
He has been working on being less reserved onstage. “For a long time, I wanted to be a little bit more dry, because I thought it was more relatable to the audience,” he said. Now he is opening up.
“You need to feel prince,” Kolpakova told him during a “Bayadère” rehearsal, getting up and demonstrating what she meant: chest forward, gaze lifted.
“He has changed so much since he arrived,” Kolpakova said, as he demonstrated the phrase again. “Not everyone can do.”
After rehearsal, Hernández said it has been “fun to see how far” he can take things. “I want to allow myself the possibility of surprising even myself,” he said.
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