An October Gala in Moscow

Olga Guardia de Smoak is the go-to person on most matters relating to classical ballet. She currently is serving as the organizer for the March 26-28 Semi-Finals for the VKIBC to be held in New Orleans March 26-28, 2017, prior to the June Competition in New York City.

This current activity is simply one of a lengthy string of ballet events Olga either has master-minded or assisted in bringing to fruition. From my standpoint, and personal involvement, one of her stellar achievements  was organizing the 2000 Ballets Russes Celebration in New Orleans, enabling Geller/Goldfine Productions to jump start their remarkable documentary The Ballets Russes.

In the process of asking me to identify West Coast dance teachers who might want  to send students to the VKIBC semi-finals, Olga mentioned a mid-October Gala at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre  being facilitated by Jelko Urasha, former Festival Ballet dancer and husband to the late Belinda Wright.

It seems that ,besides his noted staging of Pas de Quatre for four ballerinas, Sir Anton Dolin created a Pas de Quatre for men, naming the variations for the elements of Wind, Fire, Air and Water. This work will be presented at the October Gala, featuring the following male principals: Marian Walter, Berlin Ballet;  Artem Ovcharenko, Bolshoi Ballet ; Vadim Muntagorov, Royal Ballet; Taras Domitro, San Francisco Ballet.

At this writing, the music is unknown, but will be posted when available.

July 8, 2016  Olga Guardia de Smoak and Deborah Brooks came to the rescue  with the name of the composer: Marguerite Keogh.  The title of the music is Variations for Four.Keogh apparently was a musical accompanist for Dolin and Festival Ballet. The work was created in 1957.

Thanks to both informants.

 

 

 

 

 

Yuri Possokhov shares Prix de Benois with Johan Inger

Through Olga Guardia de Smoak, I learned that Yuri Possokhov was awarded the Prix de Benois recently in Moscow, sharing the choreographic award with Johan
Inger of Nederlans Dans Teater. Possokhov, who is choreographer-n-residence at San Francisco Ballet and served as one of its principal male dancers prior to retirement from dancing, was cited for the Bolshoi Production of  A Hero in Our Time, recently premiered at the Bolshoi Ballet Inger received the award for his production of Carmen for Nederlans Dans Teater.

The full complement of winners is available on the Benois de la Danse website.

Dwight Grell, 6/7/1937- 2/3/2015

The Los Angeles Times printed Dwight Grell’s obituary March 2, 2015. David Colker did a good job summarizing the outline of Dwight’s passion for Russian Ballet, accurate and anecdotal.

But the skein of association and the times when Dwight stumbled upon his
passion, thanks to the 1959 West Coast tour of the Bolshoi Ballet under Sol Hurok’s auspices lingers for those of us who knew him in varying shades of
intimacy.

I first met Dwight during the 1986 USA IBC Competition in Jackson when Sophia Golovina was one of the master teachers in the International Ballet School, Yuri Grigorovitch the Russian Juror and Robert Joffrey the Jury Chair.Two Russian competitors were Nina Ananiashvili and Andris Liepa. These two young dancers shared the Jackson Grand Prix, the first of only three awarded in the Competition. The second was Jose Manuel Carreno in 1990 and Johann Kobborg in 1994.

Dwight Grell, slender to gaunt because of Chrone’s disease, was there with Todd Lechtik, a short, energetic young photographer whose working hours were spent with a UCLA medical clinic. Todd had taken pictures of the exhibits that Dwight assembled when either the Bolshoi or the Kirov hove into view and he soon became the Archives’ official photographer. Todd said Dwight would go to the flower mart at 4 a.m. to select the flowers to throw on the stage, red and gold streamers for the Bolshoi, blue and white ribbons for the Kirov.

Todd said Dwight would instruct him when to send a bouquet sailing across the orchestra pit. In the beginning, the venue was the Shrine Auditorium which had basketball marks on the floor. The physical anomaly must have made those floral tributes that much more welcome.

Dwight’s genius were the gestures, the smallnesses making a dancer smile, to feel cherished. The flowers, his ability to be around to turn pages for the pianist, to run errands, and in return toe shoes ready for the discard became part of a rapidly growing cache of memorabilia

Todd’s skill as a photographer and as a ballet student with Yvonne Mounsey proved invaluable to Dwight’s Archives.

Mounsey danced in Colonel de Basil’s Original Ballets Russes on its final 1946-47 U.S. tour. When George Balanchine revived The Prodigal Son for New York City Ballet, Mounsey danced The Siren..

“We roomed together in Jackson, in London, in Moscow. Word got around about Dwight’s interest and once he was offered 100 postcards on ballet outside the Bolshoi.”

When I was assisting Olga Guardia de Smoak in organizing for the Ballets Russes Celebraton in New Orleans in 2000, Dwight arrived bearing a large, oblong package which revealed an ornate gilded frame. Inside was the ballet program performed at the Bolshoi celebrating the coronation of Nicholas II in Moscow.

If my memory is accurate, one of the principals was Mathilde
Kessinskaya, one time lover of that last Romanov emperor. It gave me a flutter, along with one or two volumes Olga identified. “Those are the year books which Sergei Diaghilev compiled.”

In 2003 Dwight’s balletic treasure were donated to USC, where not only is it a record of a devoted balletomane, but it also reflects Russian ballet history in the mid-late twentieth century.

A year or two later, Dwight joined Pomona College friends, Irene Nevil, Ina Nuell Bliss, and me for lunch. When it was over, Harry Major said,, “ His work should be featured on California Gold.” I am not sure that ever happened, still, there was no doubt that Dwight Grell was himself a treasure.

Terry de Mari, 1928-2015

One-time member of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo,long-time dancer in noted American musicals, Terry de Mari died February 10 in his native Omaha, Nebraska from cancer. He had just celebrated his 87th birthday.

Born to Sicilian parents, de Mari was a high school athlete when encouraged to study dance. After local studies, he moved to New York City where he studied with Martha Graham and at the School of American Ballet. Dancing under his mother’s maiden name, de Mari worked first in muscials before auditoning and joining the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1954; he was promptly cast in a major character role by Leonide Massine when Massine created a ballet to the music of Harold in Italy.

In 1957 de Mari joined the touring company of My Fair Lady, remaining with it through 1960 when the troupe appeared in Russia, dancing in Moscow, and Kiev. While in Moscow, Francis Gary Powers was shot down in his U2 while flying over Russia. and captured by Soviet forces.

With tensions at a height, the planned appearance in Odessa was cancelled, but the company did dance in Leningrad where they watched a Bolshoi Ballet performance of Don Quixote. The following day,Rudolph Nureyev apparently invited the dancers to lunch where he quizzed them regarding the United States. A year later Nureyev defected at Orly Airport.

De Mari’s credits in musical theatre included productions of Brigadoon, Oklahoma, Kiss Me Kate,Paint Your Wagon,Call Me Madam, Wonderful Town, Peter Pan, Damned Yankees, Camelot. He served as dance director for three productions of Hello Dolly when the featured performers were Carol Channing, Eve Arden, Ginger Rogers and Dorothy Lamour. De Mari was particularly responsible for coaching Lamour in Las Vegas when she alternated performances with Ginger Rogers. When Lamour was ready to tour with the production, de Mari was responsible for auditioning and hiring the singers and dancers for
Lamour’s production and also lead to a long friendship.

During his career de Mari worked with Gower Champion, Jack Cole, Hanya Holm, Gemze de Lappe, and his associates included Brian Ahern, Jane Powell, Alice Faye, Phil Silvers, Howard Keel.

My first and only direct contact with de Mari was during the initial inspection of facilities in preparation for the 2000 Ballets Russes Celebration, which formed the cornerstone for the Geller-Goldfine documentary Ballets Russes; The production debuted at Sundance Film Festival and wasnominated for an award. The New York Times considered it one of the best documentaries that year.

Terry provided the information clearing center for the Ballets Russes alumni; the site preparation and arrangements were in the hands of Olga Guardia de Smoak, president of the New Orleans International Ballet Conference. The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities partially subsidized the conference.

Terry de Mari was perhaps five feet six inches, physically fit as one would expect, and completely present during the preparations and the celebration itself. He and his colleagues produced two monographs of dancers’ memories, Reminiscences I and II, for Ballet Russes dancers and lovers.

Terry continued to provide me with information, particularly the winnowing of Ballet Russes dancers, names which joined the In Memoriam list at the annual Isadora Duncan Dance Award Ceremony in San Francisco.

Thinking of Terry, I realize his level-headed approach was singulaar. Capable of great emotion and excitement, Terry also conveyed his personal understanding and importance as a link, the information locus to whom everyone turned, a role he never shirked and admirably filled. Not only will I miss his unflagging source of news, but very much the knowledge of his awareness of that important task, keeping people in touch.

Blessings on your soul, Terry. I shall miss our contacts, but value the style with which you served dance with such competence.

Clarifying a 2013 Entry

Recently I received an e-mail from Gloria de la Guardia de Alfaro, younger sister
of Olga Guardia de Smoak, pointing out her sister was married to James Smoak
from South Carolina and not to Pavel Smok. I responded she was correct and the error reinforced why the name of this blog was “woollywesterneye.”

Today, September 15, I re-acquainted myself with the February 2013 entry; I can easily see why Mrs. del Alfaro might object. The offending information read:

“The gossip from the Competition was that this energetic, slender, tiny-boned woman from Panama, with her sharp-nosed oval face was not only their interpreter, but the wife of the Czech juror, Pavel Smok. The different spelling went unnoticed in the heat and steamy excitement at that first competition in Jackson, partly because no one wanted to investigate, partly because there was no reason for anything official to bear Olga’s name at the time, nor the fact that this Vassar graduate listed New Orleans, Louisiana as her home and base of operations.”

Note: following Smoak’s name, I wrote “The different spelling went unnoticed….
partly because no one wanted to investigate….” I probably should have clarified at the time that Olga was married to James Smoak, but did not.

This entry is intended to acknowledge the partial ambiguity of my prose and the sisterly care demonstrated by Mrs.de Alfaro, a distinguished Spanish-language writer, active in PEN in South America. Unfortunately, for mono-linguists like me, her works have never been translated. The two Smoak sisters are tri-lingual; Olga added Russian as a fourth. –

USA IBC Update

Last reported, the official United States International Ballet Competition was listed as having 109 entrants. The current listing numbers 90, 19 originals deciding not to appear. Thirty-one will represent the United States, ten of them seniors, seven women, three men, ages ranging from 19 to 26. The twenty one juniors, 15 to 18, fifteen are young women, six young men. Japan follows next with seventeen. Of the eleven seniors, seven are women, four are men, the remaining six are all junnios. South Korea and Brasil are each represented with nine aspirants. For South Korea three are women and four men in the senior category, and one junior male and female. Brasil has two senior women and three senior men, three junior women and one junior male entrant. Cuba and the Czech Republic are each sending senior women; so are Mongolia, Panama and the Philippines. Senior Women from the People’s Republic of china will be two and the Russian Federation three. Single Senior male entrants will arrive representing Australia, Chile,People’s Republic of China, Colombia, France, Mongolia, Poland Portugal and South Africa. Cuba and the Philippines each will be represented by two senior men.

Amongst the junior contestants, single medal candidates will arrive from Chile, the People’s Republic of China, Mexico and Peru. And the young men will have one aspirate from Brasil, two from the People’s Republic of China and one from Mexico, Daniel McCormick-Quintero, an advanced student at the San Francisco Ballet School.

The smaller number of competitors represents something of a God send for jurors and audiences. In 2010, over a hundred competed; despite the marvelous clowning of hostess Evelyn Hart, who was a full performance every time she stepped to the podium to introduce a contestant and the number danced, there were just so many classical variations one could observe, particularly the Don Quixote pas de deux with the Diana and Acteon a close second, before the eyes glazed, searching for something to rivet the attention. But this is what makes a competition a competition — how clean can you dance, how well do you phrase,with the music – on top, ahead, or slightly en retart? How smooth are your transitions? Do you look as if you’re enjoying yourself, are the fouettes in place or do they travel, and are they requisite number?

During the competition, bets – not often monetary – start on who will advance to Round Two, traditionally the contemporary one. Veteran observer and occasional juror Olga Guardia de Smoak will have sized the roster up by the end of Round One. She will take her program, appraise it and calculate. Remind me to ask her and report how frequently she comes up dead on accurate. This year, she will be interviewing Jury Chair Edward Vilella at one of the special lunches planned for Competition enthusiasts.

Claudia Shaw will return to record each performance, selling copies of the variations during intermissions, working overtime to deliver DVD’s to dancers seeded and choosing to return home, not watching the remaining sessions, taking classes with the International Ballet School faculty, possibly joining the massive entrance piece devised for opening the Gala, a practice first created by Dennis Nahat.

And in the press room, Vicki Harper Blake will answer questions, computer space, provide special copy, hand out tickets to the press-related folk.

There may be a thunderstorm or two; all part of a June Jackson, Mississippi international ballet competition every four years.

Memory Lane: Olga and Dorothy – III

Four young men and three young women arrived in San Francisco the Monday afternoon before the Saturday evening performance.  Another arrived on Tuesday.  Olga arrived earlier.  From Tuesday until Friday, there was at least one daily telephone call.  “Renee, we need a photographer.  Can you help?” “The tunic for Swan Lake is missing.  Do you know a costumer?” “We’re leaving Mehdi and Marin bare chested for Bayadere and Corsaire. I like good-looking young men bare chested!”  Amid my desk duties at work, it was a great diversion to hear her voice, always enthusiastic, always excited about what was happening on stage.  “Oh, Renee, Mehdi has taken over and is leading the group, and what results he is getting!  He is WONDERFUL!”  My own excitement began to rise. I called my reviewing colleagues; everyone had prior engagements.  I couldn’t believe it.

The photographer materialized by an appeal to Shirley Peltz.  Nita Winter conversed with me late on Wednesday and Thursday.  I wondered if my own excitement could possibly convey to her how important the event was.  To Nita is was an understandable matter of economics, time versus dollars.  Nita was matter-of-fact, went off to Friday’s dress rehearsal with nothing promised about remaining.  She wound up staying until Sunday morning, sleeping on  Dorothy’s couch.

With my friend Remy Munar I took a later morning Greyhound bus to Stockton, knitting while she slept and speculating about the four dancers I had not seen.  Three I saw at Jackson, 1979 and 1982, and I knew just how good they were. It turned out Marin Boieru danced a variation in Maurice Bejart’s Gaite Parisienne during the Belgian-based company’s last Zellerbach auditorium appearance.  From the tension I felt, one would have thought I was the impresario as I taxied from the motel to be with Olga while she handled a last-minute tape tech.

Dorothy greeted me as I walked through the Romanesque arches of the Commodore Stockton Theatre, the high school auditorium she has saved from destruction.  With excellent sight lines, acoustics and rental fees, it could be rented by outsiders.  It conveyed the ambiance of pre-World War II  California Valley, settled, a trifle staid, but solid, enduring and occasionally capable of grace.  Characteristically, Dorothy was steady ahead.  Last-minute television interviews in Stockton and Sacramento had begun to swell last-minute ticket sales.  By curtain, the pre-performance sale of 700 tickets had passed 1000 for the 1500 seat auditorium.   Dorothy remarked to me, “It is going to be a success.  I wanted these dancers here because I wanted Stockton to see the best, to have them as criteria.  I knew they would dance off of each other, stimulated by their mutual presence.  They’re winners, all of them.  Olga is good with her mixes.” While we chatted, the dancers began to file in, to warm up and apply their makeup.

Staying with hosting families, their arrivals were spotty.  The pre performance situation possessed a sparseness because of their small number, and perhaps the physical distance between their regular habitats and Stockton itself.  But the ritual of preparation, using the iron pipes of the orchestra pit for a barre, overrode the strangeness of location, the anomaly created by the confluence via jet travel.

Silhouetted by the dim stage light, curtain up to aid the sound tech, a woman walked towards one of the stage entrances with a large flat box.  “Flowers?”
I inquired. “That’s about it,” came the reply as she marched ahead, sprays for the women, single roses for the men.

Shrouded  with shadows, two dancers entered the back aisle of the theatre.  One sported a discernible soup bowl line of straight brown hair: Marin Boieru, newly a member of Pennsylvania Ballet.  The other had a face familiar to Roman mosaics in the ancient empire ruins in North Africa; the curly mop of  hair, aquiline noise, large eyes with liquid stillness.  Mehdi Bahir, product of Rosella Hightower’s training in Cannes, a kitchen worker to pay his tuition in training for the Prix de Lausanne he won in 1975.  Mehdi’s practice costume was a outlandish a frame as his physical presence startlingly evoked Mediterranean classical artefacts.  A slash of white banding held the curly mop off his eyes; an outsized white shirt draped to the knees over garbage bag green sweat pants.  Face, textures, color conspired to display pure theatre.  Mehdi’s turnout,  diagrammatically correct like the pages of Blasis’ treatise, gave the impression of his oozing into the floor when he sat down, stretching his legs before him.  Boieru appeared in the orchestra pit.  Eric Vu An, white towel slung around his neck, looked as if preparing for a prize fight.  He grasped the painted iron pipe and started his ritual plie, tendu through the five balletic positions, occasionally breaking line to flex a recalcitrant music in the way dancers squiggle idiosyncratically in movement.

Claudia Jung and Nancy Raffa, their personalities to emerge during performance, practiced lifts with Eric Vu An and Marin Boieru before the curtain.

Jung required one-hand lifts above Vu An’s head.  The timing – preparation, transition, breathing and sheer physical heisting – all belonged to the Don Quixote pas de deux for which Mehdi Bahiri had coached them.  With visual acumen and obvious skill, Mehdi had coached the two slender young race horses into one of the most stylish, polished renditions I had witnessed in four decades of ballet going.  Vu An and Jung used their European stage presence and deportment to counter what American audiences usually expect in fiery audience flirtation.  The classicism was a trifle cool, but theirs was an excitement as Jung’s high-arched foot defined the extension of her leg in the up and out of second position. It nearly rammed her ear while retaining a classical look.

Eyeballs had bulged while Jung executed warming up battements for they had become a grand jete, one leg going vertical while the supporting foot of the other remained on the floor.  More exciting than the circus, Jung’s training and stamina for such a flexible body demonstrated the obvious systematic technical mastery  and care lavished on her by Konstanze Vernon of Munich,  one of the 1982 jurors at Jackson.

Memory Lane: Olga and Dorothy IV

Boieru and Vu An both both distinguished themselves with personality variations created by Maurice Bejart.  Boieru’s technique, pushed to the point of wobbling,  was out of practice in dancing classical repertoire.  Vu An brought form, intensity and his cool precision to a variation from Bahkti, Bejart’s questionable pastiche  version of Hindu iconography and philosophy, mutilating traditional Indian dance repertoire and form.  None the wiser for the cultural desecration, the Stockton audience cheered Vu An’s rendition.

Raffa and Bahiri lent a very Mediterranean warmth to Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.  Theirs was an easy elegance and musicality, nurtured by their backgrounds of Algeria, Sicily and Naples, reminding one that some of the early ballet greats were southern Italian in origin.  They skimmed easily across the Marley flooring strips, turning and completing like well-oiled, elegantly constructed tops, pulled and retracted by the musical phrases stringing their steps along time.  Similar ease and understatement was exhibited later in the Kafka-Kurova rendition of La Fille Mal Gardee, an ease deception of the hours of construction and labor, so carefully framed by the technique that it seemed naturally inevitable.

Ballet sometimes seemed to have been made for little girls.  Certain this one performance proclaimed that cliche.  Above and beyond the enthusiasm of the adult audience, the clutch of girls, obviously Dorothy’s pupils, look alikes with long straight filly manes of hair, dresses flouncing a little. Mary Jane shoes, white stockings over sturdy calf and thigh muscles, already showing the effects of ballet barre discipline induced a whisper of moisture in my remembering eyes.

For the finale, Bahiri has just completed his solo variation in Corsaire, the staple made international first by Rudolph Nureyev and now standard competition fare.  Jung, in blue velvet etched with gold braid, had taken her position en pointe and started her variation. Suddenly total BLACKOUT!

An announcement quickly followed ” There has been a total power failure.  Would the audience please leave the auditorium as quickly as possible by the nearest exit.”

The audience complied, rapidly, orderly.  I made my way against the stream of bodies backstage to find Olga, standing calm but stricken, in her yellow silk pant suit.  With the aid of a small pocket flash fished out of my knitting bag, the dancers crept down the stairs to the basement dressing rooms and green carpet area.  They sat mute, expressionless, on the carpet in a near circle while the technicians worked to restore the power.  In less than fifteen minutes the  lights were on again, and some audience stalwarts had returned to their seats.

But fearing injury, the performance did not resume.  Visibly shaken, Dorothy brought the seven soloists on stage, explaining to the audience why it was impossible to ask the dancers to complete Corsaire.  The roses were distributed, the fans applauded and cheered despite the unexpected close to a glorious exposition of classical ballet.

Direction and arrangements were given for tomorrow’s transportation; borrowed tunics were retrieved; plans confirmed for a Sunday evening supper in San Francisco, and an exodus made for the final party near the Stockton Marina.  The power failure had induced a patron to guarantee a new lighting system for the Theatre.

The party consisted of pastry puffs filled with sea food and scallops quickly demolished, virtually gone by the time the dancers reached the party.  Vu An was the first to depart since he, Raffa, Bahiri and Boieru were scheduled to leave San Francisco before noon for New York City.  Dressed like an international preppy, Vu An might have inspired Cole Porter lyrics or inhabited a Noel Coward stage set, rather than the sweat and exertion of Petipa, Lander and Bejart choreography.

In the flat midnight chill that crept up around my ankles from the river at the Stockton Marina, any balletic Cinderella would have treasured pumpkins after a night’s exposure to those four dancing princes.  Olga and Dorothy had conspired to bring that magical story alive.

The only dance review related to that memorable gala was published in the March, 1983 issue of Dance News, an issue which proved to be the journal’s swan song.

Memory Lane: Olga and Dorothy – II

When my turn arrived to question the Russian visitor, Gennadi looked at me and the surrounding scene behind long lashes and a smile worthy of de Vinci’s Mona Lisa.  His answers were translated to me by Olga and George.  Gennadi kept on smiling at me.  This was an interview?

The matinee hour loomed close.  We trooped back to the car after short, swipe-like forays in the nearby women and men’s clothing store before climbing into the car. “Don’t let him see too much, ” groaned Olga.  “He didn’t take much money out of Russia, only $15.”  [Olga later said this was standard Soviety practice before glosnost.]  The energies bounding around struck me like a wind instrumental ensemble, a counterpoint to my own lugubrious tones, heaving like the umpha-pah of a tuba.  Olga was the fife with a ceaseless supply of oxygen, Marda’s qualified for the piccolo pitch while George and Gennadi supplied the more mellow tones of oboe and bassoon.

During Round III, after the excitement around the defection of Lin Jian-Wei, the Shanghai-trained dancer, Olga stopped me in the aisle and asked if I would be willing to program Gennadi during his San Francisco visit.  Would I?  In that setting and with such a prelude, it reverberated like an imperial summons, with all the balletic mystique one could possibly conjure.

So Gennadi came, and stayed at the flat and was escorted around by Thelwall Proctor, professor of Russian at Humboldt State University.  Gennadi visited Anatole Vilzak at San Francisco Ballet, still out on 18th Avenue,where Vilzak gave him his graduation certificate from the Imperial Ballet School on Theatre Street;  Gennadi took the certificate with him to Nuvosibersk  for the Guild and Museum he had fostered there.  And ultimately he departed.

Labor Day weekend came a cheerily-voiced phone call.  The voice warbled over the telephone, “Renee, it’s Olga!”  She announced an international roster of seven competition winners would dance in November in Stockton.

Stockton? Yes, Stockton.  Stockton, California, home of the original Caterpillar Tractor Company; Sperry “Drifted Snow” flour; the first state hospital, an asylum for the insane George Shima, the Potato King, whose engineering efforts reclaimed so much  Delta land for agriculture from the swamps, land reclaimed that he could not own because he was Japanese-born.  Stockton, the first major American settlement of  Sikhs from the Punjab in India.  It was the Sikh presence which was responsible for changing the name of the Japanese Exclusion League to the Asian Exclusion League.

Enter Dorothy Percival, Stockton’s raison d’etre for the forthcoming galaxy gathering, and another redoubtable lady in dance.  Artistic Director of the San Joaquin Concert Ballet Association, member of the Pacific Regional Ballet Association,  Dorothy possessed a braid sometimes hanging down her back, making me think of the  Bird Woman of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, without whom those explorers would never have made it to the Pacific Ocean.  Whether or not Dorothy was part Indian, she was in spirit a Sackajaweah, and she could bird dog an idea into reality with equally persistent energy.  Straight-faced, forthright, a woman remarkably open and unpretentious, tempting one to strew flowers in celebration.

Dorothy, in my memory, proceeded from loving. She nurtured, involved and fostered more talent than was easily enumerated, and from atypical ballet body types and ages.  The expression emerged, however, for Dorothy had the remarkable gift of being alert to the best, and finding it without turning her back or closing the door on anyone.  With a skill born only from a surpassing devotion, Dorothy put them all to work, purposefully, providing that all-important climate where the young, vulnerable, aspiring, the dreamer was permitted to get to together, decide their direction, labor and ultimately go forth.  In my memory, with the final summation of talent required of such nurturing, Dorothy knew when, how and why to let the fostered to, to release them without clutching, without tears.  There may be naysayers to this evaluation written some thirty years ago, but I was never aware of it.

The seven dancers Olga and Dorothy collected had accumulated awards in junior and senior individuals, numbered thirty.  A few special dance award and national citations were also added.  European commitments between  September and November changed the personae, but the line remained international, both exciting and impressive.  It included Medhi Bahiri, Algeria; Marin Boieru, Roumania; Claudia Jung, Germany; Lubomir Kafka and Jana Kurova, Czechoslovakia; Nancy Raffa, U.S.A.; Eric Vu An, France.  The Stockton International Awards Gala was the U.S. debut for Jung and Vu An.

The list included a clutch of Prix du Lausanne winders: Bahiri; Kurova; Raffa.  Bahiri, Boieru, Jung, Kafka , Kurkova and Vu An ad earned medals at Varna , Bulgaria where the jet-ago phenomenon had fostered the first International Competition in 1953. Boieru and Jung won medals at Moscow, the Czechs in Tokyo. Boieru enjoyed the additional distinction of having partnered the Italian ballerina Carla Fracci. Equally staggering were the roster of companies the dancers represented: Basle, Switzerand; Bejarts Ballet of the Twentieth Century; Ballet West; Boston Ballet; Dusseldorf Opera, Germany; National Ballet of Prague; American Ballet Theatre; Pennsylvania Ballet; l”Opera de Paris where Louis XIV’s passion for ballet had enjoyed its first subsidized home.

The dancers were gathered by their facility for winning and with Olga’s specialty, handling talented dancers, who were in some way Russian-trained. They had not performed together prior to their Stockton arrival five days prior to the Gala and most had not seen each other dance.  The original performance, scheduled for November 5, would have enabled another appearance in southern California to defray their air travel expense.  An unavoidable delay meant that Dorothy and the San Joaquin Concert Ballet had to go the financing alone.  That was asking a lot for a valley town for a one-shot performance in the 1982 economy.  Characteristically, however, Dorothy remarked while talking in the pre performance hush, “If you don’t risk once in a while, you never get anywhere!”