My Second Act: In the Footsteps of “The Nutcracker”

In 2019 I experienced the fiftieth anniversary of The Nutcracker in Tulsa. Yes, that’s me in the photo below, in Tulsa Ballet’s first-ever full-length production. Roman Jasinski, the artistic director and choreographer, was particular as he choreographed the “Arabian” on me and three others: how we should hold our hands, when we should allow a dip of our wrists to “lower our veils,” how we had to be absolutely synchronized to be effective. Moscelyne Larkin, the co-artistic director of the company, always maintained that we “were the best of all the Arabians” for the thirty-plus years that the variation was performed.

This fifty-year old photograph tells the tale: I was tall and thin, possessed of a good turnout, flexibility, and something else this particular photo does not show: the famous Ballet Russe arms, beautiful when in motion. We were very well-trained ballet dancers, and although the show was tweaked over its long run, it remained basically the same.

That old production, worn out from almost a thirty-five-year run, has been retired, costumes and sets in tatters and prohibitively expensive to refurbish. And ballet itself has changed, just as the Olympics have changed: What was daring and difficult fifty years ago is no longer challenging. The dancers in today’s Tulsa Ballet, under Marcello Angelini’s direction, are some of the best in the world.  

I now serve as chief historian and archivist for Tulsa Ballet, and as such I was asked to contribute photos and costumes for the inaugural event of the Nutcracker Alumni group. I spent hours in the archives going through old photographs destined for various publications. It was there that I came upon the photos from that first production, and that’s when it hit: I was there, I danced. I was a young adult. The performance photos are grey and grainy, but they do not lie. I was young, but I am not young now.

What, exactly, does this mean? It means that ballet is well into my past. Many people are “former dancers,” but some of them retired just last year, or even just last week. I retired for good when I was twenty-seven, after performing in a small contemporary company in Virginia. That was many years ago.

My forty-eighth  wedding anniversary is this year. I’m sure our fiftieth anniversary will hit equally hard as that anniversary of The Nutcracker. Isn’t the fiftieth for old people with glasses and silver hair, looking happily over their celebratory wedding cake at the camera?

Here’s what our fiftieth SHOULD mean: We are young at heart, healthy, ready for the next adventure, and extremely lucky to be all those things. Please, Lord, do not let me fret over those dance injuries that have come home to roost. So what if I’m creaky? I DANCED, I was in a ballet company; I had the best classical training available at the time. I’m now the chief historian of my company, and it is more than enough. I would not trade a single minute. Whatever I am today, it is because of that training, those experiences, that discipline, those friendships. I am forever grateful.