Please Call Me Home

…..continued from previous post.

Dear Boo and Bubble,

At the age of 12, I became eligible to audition for the Greenville Civic Ballet. Mrs. McClellan founded and directed the company. Becoming a member carried some prestige for students who studied ballet with her - a natural progression from recitals where everyone participated to a more select group that performed once year. Even though small in number, the company had a hierarchy. A dancer could graduate from corps to soloist if she exhibited certain levels of proficiency. I realized my dream of becoming a soloist when I turned 15.

My roles never included a dew drop or sugar plum fairy. Nor did I ever don the tutu of a swan. We had neither the dancers nor the facilities to produce the more familiar ballets. Mrs. McClellan choreographed pieces for us with music that underscored her own vivid imagination. As a matter of course, my memory of specific performances has totally faded.........except for two. They are forever indelibly imprinted on my brain.

The first was an original work entitled “The Summons of Sariel,” a rather somber interpretation of the judgments made by the Judaic archangel of death. My role was that of a very ill blind girl mortally afraid of leaving her earthly parents. The interpretation proved challenging because, regardless of the steps, I had to maintain a constant stare with my eyes. I held my arms up in front of me as if feeling my way along. Ultimately, Sariel called my character to eternity after uniting her with a young mother who would die in childbirth. For the Civic Ballet, “The Summons of Sariel” was a weighty departure from the usual program selections. And it was an artistic risk for Mrs. McClellan because of its more modern, interpretive genre.

Staging was also a challenge. Since this all happened long before sound and light boards of today, achieving proper visual effects required manually covering the lights on overhead battens and in the wings with gels, the transparent yet hued material that changes the color of light when placed across the path of the beam. Once the overheads were set, they could not be changed without lowering the batten onto the stage, but the wings offered some flexibility. By placing a variety of gels in a wheel plate, a stage hand could instantly change the color of the light beam by turning the wheel.

During rehearsals, Mrs. McClellan worked diligently with the stage crew to cue light changes at the appropriate time. The ballet started with a brighter cast, but when Sariel appeared, the lights were supposed to change dramatically to a deep blue/purple backdrop, all achieved by simultaneous gel shifts from the wings and a cut to only blue-gelled lights from the battens. We practiced the scene over and over until Mrs. McClellan was satisfied. The dress rehearsal the night before the performance went flawlessly.

The next day, the dancers arrived at the theater (once again at Greenville High) and went to our assigned classrooms to put on make-up and costumes. All of the soloists shared a room and, shortly after we congregated, Mrs. McClellan came in all excited.

“Look what I found downtown this morning,” she exclaimed. “Chignons for everybody!”

We all looked at each other a little perplexed. Until then, she had said nothing about how we were to wear our hair.

“I really wanted everyone to have a completely stylized look, but couldn't figure out how to do it because your hair is all so different. I found these today at the wig store on Main Street and I think I've pretty well been able to match everybody's hair color. Now, if you will all brush your hair back tightly and spray it good and pin these buns at the nape of your neck, it will be perfect.”

We all did as told, some of us more easily than others. I, for one, had relatively short hair which required a lot of spray to get it to lie flat and what seemed like a hundred bobby pins to secure the chignon. With the bun in place, I finished up my makeup, donned my blind girl costume and headed to the hall where Mrs. McClellan waited to conduct our pre-performance warm up.

Promptly at 8:00 PM, the houselights in the auditorium dimmed and the curtain rose on “The Summons of Sariel.” One by one, at the appropriate points in the music, the characters of the ballet took the stage and began to weave the story for the audience. In the second act, the time came for Sariel to enter. The music marched up, up, up the scale to a thunderous crescendo and, on the specific prescribed singular note, the stage hands in the wings turned the gel plates to the blues, purples and blacks that they had drilled so hard to perfect.

The effect was immediately dramatic......especially the part where the combination of gel colors projecting onto our chignons turned them a very ghastly blood red. Apparently, the buns were not real hair. Whatever their construct, they had an allergic reaction to the lights. Instantly, we all looked like we had been fatally shot in the back of the neck. On stage, we dancers continued with the ballet, at first unaware of what was happening. The situation, however, didn't go unnoticed by the audience as a hubbub started slowly rippling through each row until the entire auditorium seemed to be vibrating in a collective, muffled laugh.

There was nothing we could do to stem the tide. Our red dots became the focal point of every move, pose or turn. The audience finally couldn't hold back and by the end of the ballet, all of us wished that Sariel could really just summon us right off the stage and out of Greenville High School without having to see anybody..... ever again.

…........to be continued.