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‘CRUEL ART’ BRINGS OUT THE BEST IN NUTMEG DANCERS
Nov 22, 1981
By LAURIE A. O’NEILL
Published: November 22, 1981
TORRINGTON ”CHINS!” she yelled. ”I want faces. Expression. Details, everyone!” Suddenly Sharon E. Dante, the petite, dark-haired artistic director of the Nutmeg Ballet Company, sprang from her canvas chair at one end of the studio and walked briskly to the side of 15-year-old Victoria Mazzarelli.
”That was good, very good,” Miss Dante told the young ballerina and her 18-year-old partner, John Dlugokinski, after they had negotiated a difficult lift.
”But I need more,” she declared, turning to face all of the dancers. ”I need sparkle. I want to see a performance.” It was after 8 o’clock on a cold November evening, and since midmorning the the company had been rehearsing its popular annual presentation of ”The Nutcracker.” As the dancers pattered to their places in the Land of the Snow scene for perhaps the 20th time that day, there were perceptible sighs and exchanged looks of commiseration.
”To bring out the best in young dancers – the potential that they may not even see themselves – takes cajoling, intimidation and sometimes getting ugly,” Miss Dante said later. ”Ballet has been called the ‘cruel art,’ and rightly so.”
On Friday the black leotards and woolen warmups worn by the dancers in rehearsal will be traded for satin, velvet and tulle and young Clara’s magical journey will unfold on the stage at the Torrington High School. Four performances in the school’s theater next weekend will be followed by performances on Dec. 5 at the Simsbury High School and on Dec. 12 at the Palace Theater in Waterbury.
”Here we were, a little ballet company in a mostly working-class town of 30,000 people,” said Miss Dante of the company’s first performance of Act II of ”The Nutcracker” five years ago. ”People didn’t know what to expect.” she said. ”But,” she added with a grin, ”their jaws dropped. They couldn’t believe how good it was.”
That first performance drew such praise that a decision was made to begin staging the entire ballet. In the past two years the company has presented ”The Nutcracker” in several towns, from Granby to Greenwich, and last December it performed with the New London Symphony. This year a Hartford-based staging company, Media Tech Inc., has been contracted to handle set transportation, lighting, sound, special effects rigging and security.Production costs are expected to exceed $100,000.
Seventy-five dancers wearing a total of 250 costums will be involved. Most are from the 45-member company and its two official schools, the Torrington School of Ballet and the Watertown School of Dance, which together represent the largest professional-oriented ballet organization in northwestern Connecticut.
Auditions for the production were held in September and drew 200 dancers from the greater Litchfield County area. Since then, the lights in the company’s spacious studio, a former Odd Fellows’ Hall on Water Street, have been burning late each night, and strains of Tchaikovsky’s classic score can be heard by passers-by three floors below.
At a recent rehearsal, dancers trotted in and out of the costume room. James Hodson, the company’s wardrobe designer, made lastminute costume adjustments on Donna Muschell, who will dance the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Mr. Hodson is a former managing director of the Hartford Ballet Company and the wardrobe master for the Broadway shows ”The Wiz” and ”Children of a Lesser God.”
Two seamstresses sewed beading on delicate pink bodices, hopping down from their stools to pinch seams and insert pins as the dancers turned for Mr. Hodson’s appraisal. One of the seamstresses, Llenka Brown, emigrated several years ago from Budapest, where she worked for the designer Clara Roschild. ”Theatrical clothing,” said Mrs. Brown, pronouncing it ”te-a-tri-cal,” ”is so much more difficult to construct. You must be concerned how it will move, not just how it will look.”
This, too, is Miss Dante’s concern for her dancers and the reason that the word ”details” – in big paper letters – is taped on one wall of the studio. A former assistant to the director of the Hartford Ballet, Miss Dante, 36, bases her program of instruction on the Leninrad pedogogical method, which stresses the teaching of dance through a detailed breakdown of each movement.
”There is great attention paid to the body’s placement in space, the harmony of head and arms, the strength of movement and the precision of steps,” Miss Dante said. The method is used by Russia’s Kirov Ballet, which has produced dancers such as Rudolph Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalie Makarova.
Good ballet training must be ”intense, with a method behind it,” Miss Dante contended. She tells prospective students: ”If you want only to have fun, go someplace else to learn dancing.” Her insistence on proper training and the professional quality of her dancers have won the company respect and helped attract guest choreographers, instructors and performers from the American Ballet Theatre, the New York City Ballet, the Joffrey Balley and Poland’s Warsaw National Opera. Two years ago, when a principal Nutmeg dancer injured her leg during a rehearsal of ”The Nutcracker,” her role was danced by Janet Shibata, a frequent visitor to the company and a former soloist with the American Ballet Theatre.
Miss Dante and a visiting instructor, Yuli Vzarov, a Russian dancer and teacher now living in the United States, are preparing three company members for the Mississippi International Ballet Competitions next summer. One former student and company member, Denise LePage, was awarded a scholarship to study with the American Ballet Theatre last summer and is a freelance dancer in New York City.
Since its first performance in 1971 at the Torrington Arts Festival, the company has developed a repertory of 28 ballets. With the help of a $3,000 grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, Nutmeg brings a program called ”Athletics to Esthetics,” which demonstrates the rigorous physical training a dancer must undergo, to approximately 125 Connecticut schools each year.
In its first year of operation, the company had a budget of $300, which was used primarily for the purchase of presentation flowers. Now the company has a budget approaching $250,000, derived primarily from tuition, performances and contributions. The company relies heavily on a large volunteer staff.
”It chose me. I didn’t choose it,” Miss Dante said of her profession. As a child she studied ballet with Yolan Szabo in Torrington. After graduating from high school in 1962, ”I intended to leave this town and never come back,” she recalled. Having no intention of pursuing a dance career, she enrolled as a business student at Endicott Junior College and later graduated from the University of Hartford. While in that city, she met Joseph Albano, the founder and former artistic director of the Hartford Ballet and her love of dance was rekindled. Miss Dante won a deRothchild scholarship to study dance at the Martha Graham School in New York City and subsequently performed as a soloist in the United States and Europe with several companies, including the Charles Weidman and Rudy Perez dance companies.
She returned to the Hartford Ballet as a performer and assistant to the director in 1969 and on her day off taught ballet to a handful of youngsters in the vacant Torrington studio where she had studied as a child. ”Dancers are basically self-involved people. They have to be,” said Miss Dante. ”But I’m a people person. I need and love to teach.”
Upon leaving the Hartford Ballet in 1970, she established the Torrington School of Ballet and a year later the Nutmeg Ballet Company. There are 45 dancers – six are boys – in the company, ranging in age from 12 to 18. All must study five to six days a week. More than 250 children are enrolled in the two schools. Some travel up 80 miles round trip to attend classes.
Hard work and even talent do not guarantee one a place as a professional dancer, Miss Dante said. ”You can be intelligent – a thinking dancer. Or be physically beautiful and expressive. But to be both,” she said, ”is God’s gift, and to be lucky enough to train such a dancer is a thrill and a joy.”
''To bring out the best in young dancers - the potential that they may not even see themselves - takes cajoling, intimidation and sometimes getting ugly,'' Miss Dante said later. ''Ballet has been called the 'cruel art,' and rightly so.''
IN THE MEDIA
After 50 years of building a reputation for professionalism in dance instruction, Nutmeg Ballet was forced to put that reputation to the test this year. Audition tour director Joan Kunsch injured her arm and was unable to go on her annual 18-city nationwide recruiting tour. But, “Nothing will be canceled,” she promised in early December. “It was up to me to solve it,” said Kunsch. “I thought, ‘Who better to represent Nutmeg than the former students who are making professional company careers around the country?’” She compiled a list of about a dozen Nutmeg alumni around the country and called them. They eagerly accepted the challenge. For example, Kunsch said, “We have a Nutmeg graduate, Amy Potter, who is a principal dancer in the Oklahoma City Ballet, and I called her and she’s ecstatic to do it. She said, ‘Proudly, I would do it. Proudly.’” Another former student, Thel Moore, trained at Nutmeg from 2012 to 2015. He agreed to cover three of Kunsch’s scheduled cities, including Richmond, Va., where he is a danseur at the Richmond Ballet Company. Moore said in an email, “What I typically look for in an audition is a base in classical ballet but also a love for ballet as well. I’m looking for a spark that you usually can’t teach but mold into something beautiful.” He said students are nervous at first, but “when they see the brochure [and] how beautiful the building is and how incredibly professional the staff is, they usually lighten up and get really excited for the audition.” The far-flung team of Nutmeg-trained dancers are directing auditions in January and February in nearly 40 cities in the United States and Canada. Some of these cities are on Tim Melady’s usual itinerary as audition tour co-director. Melady, Nutmeg’s principal ballet master, is also standing in for Kunsch in several cities. Speaking by phone from an airport near St. Louis, Mo., Melady said, “I have been to the West Coast. Seattle had a good turnout. Portland had a good turnout. San Francisco had a good turnout, and they are all so interested in Nutmeg and Torrington!” He said, “We’re so lucky that we have such a respected reputation.” When an auditioning dancer asks about Nutmeg, he refers them to former Nutmeg students in the area, who are happy to talk about their experiences. Melady said the constant influx of students from thousands of miles away is enriching for them, for Nutmeg and for Torrington. “People come to Nutmeg and say, ‘Oh my God, we’re meeting people from Wyoming! From California! This is crazy.’ Everybody knows about Nutmeg Ballet. It’s wonderful!” Kunsch said that when she has gone on the audition tour – which she has done every year since 1993 – she tells dancers, “Not only are you auditioning for Nutmeg; Nutmeg’s auditioning for you.” She tells them, “We’re not looking for perfection. If you were perfect, would you need us? We’re looking for trainability.” Moore said, “Bringing talent from all over is very important because it keeps Nutmeg as one of the best schools to train at in the United States.” Melady said, “[The auditioners] have heard of us, and they’ve heard of our reputation. And that’s a real advantage. Our reputation is golden. There are more and more schools just vying for this slice of talent. And there is always talent.” Victoria Mazzarelli, artistic director, said Torrington auditions at the Nutmeg Conservatory attract not only local aspirants but dancers from New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania for both the summer and year-round programs. Remaining auditions at the Conservatory at 58 Main Street are Feb. 1, 15, 29 and March 7, from 9 a.m. to noon. And by the way, said Mazzarelli, locals are most welcome! “During these next few months, our year-round students and faculty are rehearsing and preparing for our Spring Studio Series that will be held on March 18, 19, 20 and 21,” she said.
TORRINGTON – The first time Shelley Gallo and her mother, Rosemarie Meyer, attended Nutmeg Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” in 1975, they thought it was a musical play. Shelley was four years old. “When are they going to start talking?” she asked her mother. They had never been to a ballet before! But, since that night 44 years ago at Torrington High School’s Little Theatre, they have attended Nutmeg’s “Nutcracker” almost every year, missing it only once due to illness. “I’ll bet we hold the record,” Shelley said. Nutmeg’s “Nutcracker” has since outgrown the high school auditorium, of course, and now is performed yearly at the 1,750-seat Warner Theatre and the 900-seat Belding Theatre at The Bushnell in Hartford. It opens Dec. 7 at the Warner. “I remember going that first time with my mother,” Shelley said, “but I don’t really remember how I felt when I left. I do remember all the pretty ballerinas and the pretty costumes, but I can’t say I ran out of there saying I want to be a ballerina.” Rosemarie said she had taken Shelley to Christmas Village and was looking for something new to share with her. She saw an advertisement for “The Nutcracker” in what was then The Torrington Register. “I thought that was something that I’d like to start with her as a tradition,” she said. “We realized at some point in the performance that it was not going to be a play,” she said. “There was not going to be singing, or any kind of dialogue, but we just watched it in awe because the dancers were so talented and the costumes were so beautiful and the scenery was beautiful. And as the years have gone by, it’s gotten better and better.” Costumes and scenery have evolved, and this year the mother-daughter duo are looking forward to revolutionary changes. To mark Nutmeg’s 50th anniversary, hundreds of the 1,200 costumes will be new, designed by Janessa Urwin and Susan Aziz and hand-finished at Nutmeg’s own costume shop. And the 22-year-old set by Campbell Baird will be replaced by spectacular scenery by Boston’s theatrical designer Roger LaVoie. Artistic director Victoria Mazzarelli has reimagined the choreography, and Brian Sciarra has designed new lighting. There will be some delightful surprises. “There have been little tweaks every year,” Shelley said. “Maybe the lighting is a little different, or the choreography is different, or maybe there’s a sash on a costume that’s a different color. My mother and I would bump elbows and whisper, ‘Did you see that?’ This is the first year that we can’t compare our notes.” When they heard that things would look very different this year, Shelley said she and her mom were at first nervous. “But I’m sure it will be beautiful.” Rosemarie said, “I can’t wait to see this year’s new scenery and costumes. We’re both really excited about it.” Rosemarie and Shelley both love family traditions, especially around Christmastime. Since Shelley was a child, she helped her mother every year bake cookies. Now, though she lives in New Hartford and her mom lives in Torrington, Shelley says she still bakes more than 1,000 cookies every Christmas and gives them to co-workers, family and friends. “The Nutcracker” is perfect for tradition-minded people, she believes. “I love the story because it’s the whole Christmas Eve party, and I come from an Italian family,” she said. “Christmas Eve is the biggest celebration in my family. It’s such a magical time, even for me now. I carry on the cookie-baking traditions my mother and my two Italian grandmothers carried throughout the years.” Nutmeg’s new 2019 “Nutcracker” ushers in a brand-new tradition as Nutmeg Ballet enters its second half-century. Tickets can be ordered through Nutmeg’s website – also reimagined and redesigned for the occasion – at www.nutmegconservatory.org. Warner Theatre performances are Dec. 7 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. and Dec. 8 at 2 p.m. Performances at The Bushnell in Hartford are Dec. 14 and 15 at 12:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.
