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This is an Easter story with a Christmas flavor.
For a while, back in September and October, Sierra Ring practically lived at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Manhattan. At least it seemed that way.
Her job as a dancer with the famed Radio City Music Hall Rockettes required her to be there, Monday through Saturday, for hours of grueling rehearsals in preparation for the Rockette’s annual Christmas run at Radio City Music Hall. On Sunday mornings, she would get up and go right back for 10 a.m. Mass followed by another two hours of Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) classes in preparation to receive the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and first Eucharist at the Easter Vigil March 30.
“I was joking with my fellow RCIA students and my fellow Rockettes that there was a period of time there when I was at St. Paul the Apostle seven days a week... So I’m very familiar with that Church and it’s basement where our wonderful rehearsal spaces are,” she said with a smile. “I feel I kind of know every nook and cranny.”
The Rockettes have been using the large auditorium under the big granite Gothic Revival church on Columbus Ave. and 59th St. for several years now to prepare for their traditional Christmas show that has been enchanting New Yorkers for generations. But it wasn’t rehearsing day after day in the undercroft of one of the city’s great Catholic churches that inspired Ms. Ring to become a Catholic. She’d been thinking about it for some time even before the Rockettes moved into St. Paul’s.
“There were a couple of reasons I decided to look into RCIA,” she explained. “One of them is I’ve been in a relationship with someone now for seven years, and he’s Catholic. A few years ago I started to think about learning Catholicism. As time went on there were more and more reasons that I wanted to look into it.
“Not only was it something that was special for him. But I didn’t really know much about the religion, and I was growing more and more curious about it and just feeling compelled to learn more. I had attended Mass over the years many times at weddings and baptisms with family or with him, and I really started to enjoy and like the elements of the Mass even when I didn’t understand them—the tradition and beauty, the music. On the surface I could enjoy these elements but I really wanted to understand what was behind it.”
Growing up in Tucson, Ariz, Ms. Ring, 31, said that organized religion wasn’t part of her life as a child, but there was an aura of spirituality about the house. Her father was a lapsed Catholic and both of her parents were into a kind of meditative spirituality. Ms. Ring cringes a little at the description but she does admit that her parents were kind of hippies.
“I wouldn’t say that it describes them all around but they definitely went through a part of their lives where ‘hippie’ would be one way of describing them,” she said. “My full name is actually Sierra Rainbow Ring, so it’s even more flowery. It’s a great stage name though! But they believed there was a greater force that connects everything and my parents would practice meditation. So they gave me a good foundation. Religion wasn’t something they rejected but something they allowed me to choose as an adult.”
Ms. Ring doesn’t recall a time when she didn’t want to be a dancer. As a little girl she wanted to be a ballerina. Her parents encouraged her in that direction and as a young adult she moved to New York to attend the famous Alvin Ailey School. She drifted into contemporary and modern dance. While attending a workshop she discovered both musical theatre and the unique precision style of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. She auditioned for a part in the famous group.
“I always had a dream of becoming a dancer,” she said. “But becoming a Rockette just made that dream even better than I ever could have imagined. It is very much like being on a team. We often compare ourselves to athletes because it takes tremendous teamwork. It does take some getting used to. You’re sharing the stage with 35 other women and you need to get used to dancing very close to them. We’re often shoulder-to-shoulder. It’s such fun and such a unique style of dance.”
As with her attraction to the Church, she was also attracted to the Rockettes by the rich tradition associated with one of America’s most beloved cultural institutions and longest running-shows.
“The Rockettes have been performing the Christmas Show since 1933,” she noted, “and the parade of the wooden soldiers has been in this show since 1933 as well. It’s definitely a fan favorite and its one of my favorites. This will be my ninth year, and often I have this moment where I see the other women on the opposite side of the stage in their wooden soldier costumes, and it just hits me. Every Rockette has performed this number since 1933 and just sharing that history with every woman that’s ever set foot on that stage in that costume is pretty mind-blowing. So that number always reminds me how special it is to be part of the Rockette's history.”
There is another moment in that familiar show that now has special resonance with her. It is Radio City Music Hall’s annual spectacular presentation of the Living Nativity that closes each performance.
“I’ve always felt that was a beautiful moment but this year I just connected to it in a different way,” she acknowledged. “And I remember sharing that with my RCIA classmates one day, just relating to them that I’ve been fortunate enough to do the Christmas Spectacular for eight years and I’ve always enjoyed this final scene.
“This year it just had a different meaning for me. It was a unique experience that I was able to combine my job being a Rockette that I love so much and this beautiful scene with my personal journey that I was taking.”
