Food was ballet dancer Agnes Su’s way home | Canada Voices

Each month, generations reporter Ann Hui takes readers along to hang out with fascinating Canadians – regular people and celebrities, teens to seniors – joining them in their favourite pastime for up-close and candid conversations.

Agnes Su was halfway through a sentence when her jaw dropped.

A waiter was walking toward us with a giant plate of crispy, shell-in lobster, glistening with deep-fried, spicy and crunchy garlic bits.

She watched, transfixed, as the waiter set the platter down, then quietly raised her arm in the air – victory – and pumped her fist twice.

“This,” she said, “looks amazing.”

Last year, the 30-year-old made headlines as the newest principal dancer at the National Ballet of Canada. Since joining in the fall, she has won over audiences as the Snow Queen in the Nutcracker, and Hermione in the Winter’s Tale.

And though prior to this, she’d never before set foot in Toronto, the move to Canada for the U.S.-born, German-trained Ms. Su has still been a homecoming of sorts. And the food in front of us – steamed dumplings, fried green beans, and yes, the lobster – an integral part of that homecoming story.

Ms. Su’s parents, born and raised in China, first met as university students in France. After graduation, they moved to Montreal, where her father worked as an engineer and her mother as an accountant. They became Canadian citizens. Both of Ms. Su’s older brothers were born in Montreal.

In the early 1990s, the family moved again, to Newport Beach, Calif. That’s where Ms. Su was born.

She started dancing at four, and competing at eight. “Mom would always say, ‘If you’re not going to try your best, then you’d better not even try,’ ” she said. It’s an approach she’s kept to this day.

At 14, she earned a scholarship to train at the John Cranko School in Germany.

“I was like a sponge,” she said of her time there. When she graduated at 16, she was offered a spot in the Stuttgart Ballet.

She rose up quickly, becoming a favourite within the company. She was known for her unflappable demeanour, and by the other dancers for being “a machine” onstage. By 25, she was named a principal dancer.

In Stuttgart, she met her husband (Guillaume Artus, a French cellist for the Stuttgart Opera) and built a life for herself.

But still, she said, she often felt homesick. She was just a kid when she left to live on her own in Germany. Walking around Stuttgart, she often felt like an outsider.

All of this was complicated by the fact that her family had since spread to all corners of the globe. One of her brothers had moved abroad. And her parents had sold her childhood house in California. Her dad, a tech consultant, was taking contracts in different countries every few months, leading her parents to a nomadic existence.

For comfort, she turned, often, to food.

Chinese food was hard to come by in Germany, she said. “I missed my mom’s cooking. I missed going to Chinese restaurants. I just really missed it all.”

So she began to slowly learn the family recipes. Her grandmother’s dumplings. Her mother’s stir-fries.

About a year ago, Ms. Su and her husband were ready for a change. They wanted to live and work in another city. And for Ms. Su, the U.S. no longer felt like home.

They started eyeing Canada. She already had Canadian citizenship. And her husband was French. “It felt,” she said, “like Canada was everything we were looking for.”

Her husband landed a job at the Canadian Opera Company, and Ms. Su at the NBOC. And then, surprisingly, her parents decided that they were ready to settle down too – in Canada.

Sitting in Pearl Harbourfront on Toronto’s waterfront that evening, our table quickly filled with dishes: crispy squid, braised eggplant sizzling in a stone bowl. And, of course, the lobster.

Ms. Su pointed to one of the buildings beside us. It’s where she and her husband now live, a quick bike ride from the studio. Then she pointed to a building kitty-corner from her own.

“My parents,” she said, “they live right across the street.”

This restaurant is where they meet in the middle, every weekend, for dim sum.

As Ms. Su navigated her lobster, somehow managing to look elegant even while disassembling an elbow piece with her tiny fork, she said it’s a misconception that dancers don’t eat.

“We eat,” she said. “A lot.”

Dancing, after all, is a tremendous physical undertaking.

Even all these years later, she’s still trying to find the right balance. A few months ago, while preparing for the ballet’s production of Flight Pattern and Suite en Blanc – busy all day with rehearsals, then mindful of not wanting to eat a big meal before each evening performance – “without even realizing it,” she said, “I got super skinny.” So she has to be careful.

On this day, she’d had some fruit and yogurt before morning rehearsal. For lunch, she’d eaten leftover mapo tofu and rice from her mom.

Other dancers are much more strategic about food, tracking macros and protein. But for Ms. Su, nothing is off the table, so long as she’s getting enough of what she needs.

“I don’t eat seven donuts,” she said. “But I’ll eat a donut. Love a good donut.”

Since coming to Canada, surrounded by family and great restaurants, she’s found herself cooking less. “The food in Toronto,” she said, “is so good.”

We were wrapping up dinner. She looked happy, content. Despite our efforts, we still left with three takeout containers. Lunch for the next day.

But as we made our way toward the door, Ms. Su glanced back one last time at the table.

“I’m full,” she said. “But I could eat a second dinner.”