Carlos at 88 – Part II

Visiting Carlos at Villa Satori I inspected the two scrapbooks with their records of his European decade. You would need to know the relative exchange rate between the French franc and the U.S. dollar at the time. The 4/28/56 contract signed by George de Cuevas and Carlos Carvajal marking him a permanent member of the company allowed him 3 days a year for sick leave. It provided columns for rehearsal pay and  a second listing for performance, 12 and 14 francs respectively. Travel outside of France adjusted the pay columns to 31.50 and 63 francs.

If that sounds too ridiculous for words, may I state paying rent in 1955 of $35/month for a one bedroom apartment with roof access in an alley south of Market; $235 in 1960 for a North Beach Lombard Street third floor flat of five rooms and in 1966 a California Street a two-bedroom apartment in the avenues at $85 monthly.

One’s imagination could almost swoon over the de Cuevas company’s activities and personnel. There were the dancers noted for that era, the locations where they appeared, the style of their lives, and the general ethos of the ‘Fifties. In Paris the theates were the Alhambra, Champs Elysees, and the fashionable French resorts of Deauville, Aix les Bains, Biarritz. In Italy there were Nervi and Trieste and forays to North Africa. January always found the company at Cannes.

Carlos mentioned the first trip to South America was by plane, the second by a Dutch vessel. The second trip included Lima, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. In addition to his comment about the cost of beef, he remarked, “You have to realize that Argentina was still under the ambiance of the Perons. Since I am fluent in Spanish, a taxi cab driver informed me that his car had been given him by Evita.”

 

The de Cuevas company seemed to be a clearing house for remarkable number of the dance world’s leaders . Carlos danced with a young Marcia Haydee, was pictured with a rising choreographer named John Cranko in Cat’s Cradle. Massine came because of Gaite Parisienne, Nijinska to stage Sleeping Beauty, only to leave because of costume problems, the production to be completed by Robert Helpmann. George Skibine was not only a principal dancer but he also choreographed. “Everything was arranged for us, so we enjoyed ease of movement, but we worked very hard.”

I wrote remembering Carlos dancing in Jeannde Herst’s Highway 101. He had returned to San Francisco in 1965 and Nutcracker programs list him as ballet master, with a range of dancers and partnerships supplying nostalgia like Henry Kersh as Drosselmeyer with Anton Ness as his nephew, Harold Christensen in the Stahlbaum living room, Jocelyn Vollmar and Sally Bailey sharing Robert Gladstein as their cavalier, Lynda Meyer; Sue Loyd and Henry Berg prominent before departing for the Joffrey company, along with Ingrid Fraley and Nancy Robinson There are the names of Betsy Erickson, David Coll, Zola Dishong and Sara Maule who peopled American Ballet Theatre programs with Cynthia Gregory, Paula Tracy, Michael Smuin and Terence Orr. It clearly was a time, just before the Ford Foundation grants, when dancers wanting to dance frequently along with a pay check moved east where the major ballet dance employers of the time were American Ballet Theatre, The Joffrey Ballet and New York City Ballet.

Along with these reminders of ballet growth by the Bay were programs from the 1950 appearance of Sadler’s Wells Ballet in its first transcontinental tour. I saw the company in Los Angeles at the Shrine Auditorium; in San Francisco’s Opera House Ninette de Valois’ enterprise danced seventeen performances, October 30-November 12 with Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes in Swan Lake. Moira Shearer’s autographed Red Shoes were available according to an an advertisement, along with announcements by City of Paris for records of relevant ballet music produced by Columbia Records. Merriem Lanova’s  S.F. Conservatory of Ballet and Theatre Arts, Sergei Temoff’s school on Sacramento Street also advertised with the San Francisco Opera Association’s announcement of late November performances by the One and Only Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, with guest artist Yvette Chauvire. There was a pink insert reminder that Pierre Monteux was conductor and musical director of the San Francesco Symphony Orchestra in its 39th season which would feature Heifetz, Menuhin, Casadesus, Rubinstein, Serkin and guest conductors Bruno Walter, Igor Stravinsky and Guido Cantelli.

Such a recitation clearly reflects my acute nostalgia, an ambiance replaced by tastes and spaces swallowing up the pace of the mid-century effort and entertainment. But it also mirrors amazing individual and collective histories forged in the midst of the vast political, social and economic record of mid 19th century history. I feel very lucky to have been a tangential witness.  It is  part of why I celebrate friendship with Carlos Carvajal.