Odette’s Ordeal Completed

Through Dennis Mullen’s I learned that Teri McCollum died May 12 in a hospice setting and that a fellow balletomane is planning an August 6 memorial for her on the beach near her former apartment.

With her passing, San Francisco Ballet lost its most avid fan. I went on the Web to take a look at her Website, Odette’s Ordeal, A Sight for Sore Toes And Serious Ballet Fans. WordPress has, unfortunately, closed it, or my aging computer lacks the proper credentials to access Teri’s postings.

I remember Teri mentioning that Word Press wanted some money for its platform, and so she switched to Facebook. Anyone who availed themselves can find any number of curtain calls which Teri recorded on her cell phone. She also recorded the ceremony at the French Consulate when Pascal Molat received his recognition from the French Government, a warm and intimate bi-lingual twenty six minute recording.

My own connection with Teri was comparatively minimal, but distinct. She just appeared in the San Francisco Ballet Press Room about 2016 or 17 with her WordPress website, rhinestones clustered in her carrot-hued hair and around her neck, eyes sparkling and missing little. I was introduced and conversation subsequently ensued. The curriculum vitae was recited, including her gratitude to Ronn Guidi for his encouragement and subsequent use of her in Oakland Ballet’s corps de ballet. I learned that her skin turned red while dancing so she had to use white powder on her face for performances.

Teri’s, childhood problems, her MENSA qualifications, and music experience came later along with marriage, divorce and property loss, mingled with informative bits about dancers. I remember in particular her mentioning that Sofiane Sylve had helped Carlo Di Lanno for the Bruhn Competition the year he walked away with the recognition.

I remember two statements she made early in our chats. One was when she said, “I consider San Francisco Ballet my niche,” and I felt a certain invisible barbed wire had been established. While about the same time, she also divulged to my astonishment, “I consider you my mentor.” Visions of what P.W. “Bill” Manchester had meant to me rose in my mind; silently I felt there was nothing comparable in her statement.

I remember her introducing me to a solist from Het National Ballet who danced here just one season, mentioning said dancer’s meager scheduling. Bits and pieces like that made me realize Teri made herself available to San Francisco dancers to a remarkable degree, considering her full-time position managing a dental office in Marin.

And, then, suddenly, her e-mails announced her lymphoma with broken bones, which was followed by additional breaks. Doctors’ visits were facilitated by San Francisco Ballet dancers, mentioning Sasha de Solo, plus Carlo di Lanno cooking for her; another unnamed dancer cleaned her apartment. She wrote of the pleasure and peace that living near the ocean provided; every once in a while she provided a glimpse of the shoreline she enjoyed from her windows.

Her job evaporated; she mentioned her 401K funds were invaded and over time she was eligible for Medi-cal. The December before Covid she managed to make the opening night of Nutcracker, appearing in the Press Room, smiling and sporting a rhinestone pin I had added to her collection.

Covid severely cut into communications whether by dancers and/or friends. She mentioned that Pascal Molat had checked in on her. Silence ensued as I habituated myself to three-times daily bed pan routine close to home. July 17, Dennis Mullen forwarded Tab Buckner’s email stating Teri died May 12 under hospice care and that a memorial is planned August 6 at the sea she so loved.

Sayonara, Teri, you have been a genuine chapter in San Francisco Ballet’s dance life, to the artists you befriended who, in turn, rose to the occasion. And, without question, Tab Buckner who shared standing room with Teri.

Leda Meredith, 1963-2023

A terse e-mail received from her mother, Penelope Laigos Coberly, informed me of Leda’s death while she waited for board a plane to Costa Rica where Leda and Richard Orbach had built a home. Dying from the complications following a hysterectomy, she was buried May 25 in Costa Rica according to her wishes, Leda was 60.

For readers unfamiliar with Leda, and her remarkable path to the authorship of five books on organic gardening, cooking and workshops on foraging, let me say they have lost the privilege of knowing a young woman, moving from strength to strength, and not only creative but loyal and compassionate. I encountered her in the children’s classes at San Francisco Dance Theatre, located comparatively briefly above a U.S. Postal Service sub-station on mid-Van Ness Avenue. There her mother Penelope Lagios Johnson was artistic director and the children’s teacher was Jody White.  For a small, modestly run dance school, the children’s curriculum was a remarkable tribute to youthful intelligence, ly including diary keeping and voluntary sharing. Joel Levinson, now heading Dance art Support with Yuko Katsumi, and affiliated with San Francisco Ballet for Pilates, was a fellow student.

Leda emerged as a promising dancer to join Ballet Theatre II where she spent two years before joining an ensemble touring Japan annually.  “Misha did not like me,” was her explanation. She found dancing with a company touring Japan regularly and gradually transitioned into teaching which included Adelphi University. 

 During this period, she began to explore a childhood interest, fostered by her grandmother, of foraging outside formal markets, for edible vegetables. She pursued it to the point of obtaining botanical certification and holding workshops at the New York and Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, as well as publishing five books on the subject along with recipes.

When Kelly Johnson, her stepfather, decided his infirmity warranted legal suicide, Leda came out to spend some two months with him, handling the final arrangements, scattering the ashes, closing the flat and disposing of belongings. She also arranged an event at the nearby Clay Theatre in his honor. Among his managerial talents were San Francisco Dance Theatre’s comparatively short existence, and then the Berkeley Symphony during its direction under Kent Nagano, before assuming a modest career playing piano events for local retirement centers.

Leda and her husband purchased land in Costa Rica and built a home there. There were occasional Facebook notices about the fruits, fauna and calm of their location.

Then this past fall, Leda informed her followers that she had been diagnosed with uterine cancer and required a hysterectomy. The procedure was scheduled for this past April. Conveying the cost, a Go Fund Me was established. The operation was overtly successful, but complications caused Leda to decline. Leda was buried April 25 in the garden of her home in a grave dug by her husband.

An Incomparable Marin County Evening

For the second year, this time with Brooke Byrne, co-owner of Geary Dance Center, San Francisco, the trek was made to Tarra Firma Farms to see Julia Adam’s new and major work, Regenerare. Two weekends in July, Julia has presented performances cum repast on the farm where she and her husband Aaron Lucich raise animals sustainably. This rural setting is an outgrowth of summer events which commenced at Inverness and moved to Woodland, before anchoring in this location, revivified after the Covid hiatus. It is an evening experience of quiet, but masterful living art.

By July, the Marin County farm territory is straw color; when you walk on the flaxen hue the combination of clods and vegetation remind you of the fullness of agricultural season. The land undulates up and down, so that a tractor drawing a flatbed cushioned with bales of hay is required for those enjoying the repast on plank tables with the later performance on bleachers below the eating area.

Behind the tables a permanent shed is the site of the dinner preparation, the hive of activity with accessory supplies of equipment, fuel and a chromium loo accommodating two and a cadre of youthful assistants pour wine and coffee, serving the audience at least ten platters of offerings, many featuring unusual renderings of summer vegetables in addition to the sustainably raised beef.

As the sky darkens into deep azure, the evening star appears in the west and the surrounding hills with their adorning oak trees scattered artfully, the audience treks down the hill, assisted by ready blankets to see Julia’s summer offering Regenerare, featuring seven young artists dressed in simple white leotards, tights and modest skirts, save for one, garbed in loose black shirt and trousers.

Six dancers commence with a portable barre to sparkling sounds and whether using the barre or moving away from it, crisp classicism catches your spirit. Then there is a small white carrying case making its appearance by one of the feminine dancers who carries it to down stage right and opens it, a signal for the change in musical choice and the dancer’s movements, changing from formalism to casual connections.

Then from the left side of the audience bleachers, the dancer in black walks toward the platform and at the back climbs on to its surface. What follows is, of course, is the usual curiosity and appraisal by a group of a stranger, accented by costume color.

A variety of interactions follow and range from all male semi-competition and semi-bonding to an approach to the women to current melodies and involving lifts, turns and spatial covering. A notable touch was the initial appearance of a small, square white case brought on stage at the start, which the stranger opens and withdraws a small, slender vertical object which the black clad dancer presents to the other dancers, fostering examination and acceptance.

At the close of the work the black clad dancer quietly leaves the platform as do the other dancers, leaving the young woman who brought the white case to come forward, kneel before it as if to open and inspect its mysteries as the lights are extinguished.

The seven dancers, including Zoe Lucich, Julia and Aaron’s daughter, included Oliver Wolkowich, Skylar Campbell, Jackie Oakley. Matteo Ferra, Iris Rocio Davila, Fernando Martin Guillans, their affiliations with Houston Ballet, Cleveland Ballet, Ballet West, Ballet Met and current fee lancing.

It is difficult to describe the quality of the work, but it is sufficiently magic to make me want to see it on another set of young dancers locally and elsewhere.