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Ask Mme. Theo
The World's Oldest Living Prima Ballerina Assoluta Offers Advice and Comfort
to the Embattled Balletomane[In this, her first column for us (Ballet Alert! Number 2), Madame tackled the question of "updated" classics.]
Ballet Alert! is proud to present the epistolary debut of Mme. Theophilia Urmamova, the World's Oldest Living Assoluta. Urmamova's illustrious career mirrors this century. She made her debut in 1912 at the Maryinsky Theater. Showing remarkable poise for a child of twelve, she replaced her extraordinarily talented older sister, Dagmar, who died suddenly, minutes before she was to make her debut as Aurora, in a bizarre backstage accident that is not talked about in Russia to this very day.
Urmamova fled Russia in 1917 with her second husband, the Grand Duke, and danced with every company in Western Europe that would have her. Her imperious manner and rabid temper scared off most contemporary choreographers, and she spent much of her career dancing the classics, which she perfected beyond perfectibility. Technically invincible (her fouettés were fast, furious, and uncountable) and dramatically exuberant, she was truly the last of a line. She has retired her roles slowly. At 98, Urmamova no longer dances on pointe, but can still deliver a rousing Russian Stomping Dance if pressed. ("As long as Alicia is still out there," she says resignedly, "I feel it is my duty to continue.")
Urmamova lives with several other displaced and/or cast-out elderly ballerinas in a charmingly overdecorated bunker nestled between subway and sewer directly underneath Lincoln Center ("Just in case they need us," as she explained forlornly in a recent interview.) She spends her days reading the obituaries of dancers and ballets she once loved.
Urmamova has graciously consented to answer questions from readers regarding artistic matters only in these pages. She loves getting mail, and eagerly awaits your questions.
Dear Mme. Theo,
How can ballet companies change the stories around in a ballet and still call it the same thing? I mean, is that legal?
I grew up in New York City and to me, The Nutcracker was what the New York City Ballet danced. I started going when I was six, and I wanted my kids to have Nutcracker Christmases, too. For the first ten years after I got married, we lived in a small city that had a very nice Nutcracker. Maybe it wasn't NYCB, but at least it had a tree and a Sugar Plum Fairy, and my kids loved it.
But last year, my husband was transferred. This Christmas, I took my four children to something billed as "The Nutcracker! A Holiday Treat for the Whole Family." Boy, what a shock. Drosselmeyer was a child molester and the parents were all drunk. (I'm sure it wasn't a satire.) In the battle scene, the tree didn't grow. The Nutcracker grew instead. Biggest Nutcracker you've ever seen. Of course, after he grew, he just stood there and flapped his jaw at the mice.
There was no snow, no flowers (Clara and a new, pint-sized Nutcracker danced the world's longest pas de deux to the Waltz of the Flowers). Worst of all, there was no Sugar Plum Fairy! A fact noted by my six-year-old son, Buddy, who yelled out, "That's no Fairy! That's just that stupid girl in her stupid nightgown" at the quietest moment in the music. His little sister, Susie, who had been hearing Sugar Plum stories from the two older girls for weeks, cried through the rest of the second act. Shrieked, actually. We had to leave before the second attack of the candy canes.
I'm afraid this has had a serious effect on her relationship with her father. She blames him for moving. (He's been very understanding and put in for another transfer immediately. So we're off to Germany in a few weeks where they should have a good tree, at least. Someplace called Wuppertal.) Anyway, I'm wondering how a ballet company can do this and get away with it. Can you tell me?
Sign me,
Dazed in Dakron
Dear Dazy,
Alas, the answer is all too simple. Tchaikovsky is dead and cannot sue. So they can take his beautiful score and do anything they want to it. And, as you have seen all too clearly with your own eyes, that is exactly what they do. Why the good people in the audience do not rise up and throw eggs, I do not understand.
So the question is, why do they do it? Do they forget the real choreography? Can they not afford to send someone to Russia--or New York, if that's all they can manage--to get the true version? I have pondered this question for many years, and I think I have the answer. If the company has good dancers who can dance, then they dance. The companies where the dancers they are not so good, they have to make a show out of something, and so they make up these silly stories about child molesters and giant growing Nutcrackers who stand still. There is nothing you can do about it except to check out the local company very carefully before moving, just like you do schools.
Do keep in touch. I'd like to know how little Buddy likes Wuppertal.
All best,
Mme. Theo