Pirouettes and Passions: Growing up Behind the Curtain

By Mia Nadasi

Pirouettes and Passions
Growing up behind the Curtain
By Mia Nadasi

This memoir is for readers interested in ballet and theatre and life of the privileged artists behind the ex- Iron Curtain. It fills a gap about a period and Hungarys artistic life not much written about in English.
My parents were both ballet dancers, my father rose to be the Artistic Director of the Hungarian State Ballet Company. I followed their footsteps and became a dancer and an actress. The journey of our family which starts in the 19th century is typically European as it encompasses locations of several countries: Germany, France, Russia, Switzerland, even South America and of course mainly Hungary.
The history of their families could not have been more different. My father was an illegitimate child and had to overcome a poverty-stricken childhood to become a much awarded leading artist of his day, regarded today as one of the founding father of classical ballet in Hungary. He personally encountered great names in the ballet world; took classes with Cecchetti, where his fellow dancers included Nijinsky and Karsavina and watched Fokine creating his ballets. My mother hailed from a wealthy bourgeois family of French/German extraction yet the two of them ended up dancing together all over Europe before settling in Hungary.
Having established their ballet studio in Budapest they became well-known and successful members of the glittering pre-war Budapest society. I was born during the war and after the communist take-over life has changed fundamentally. Initially my parents were regarded as capitalists, but soon their expertise was recognised and like so many other artists, they became privileged within the constraints of the regime.
From an early age I was groomed to become an artist. I describe my years as a ballet student in the State Ballet Institute, based on the system of the Russian school. As a child I started acting at one of the most distinguished theatre companies (Vigszinhaz) and later I joined as the youngest ever member. At the same time I made my debut in a successful film, as a result I became one of the well-known faces in the country. When I graduated from the State Ballet Institute my partner was Ivan Nagy. However, I turned my back on ballet and decided to become an actress.
In the nineteen-fifties and sixties I got to know the most important players in the ballet, theatre and film world. During that period I grew up and matured both as a performer and a young woman. My sentimental education, crushes, romances and heartbreaks were all informed by that milieu.
I was a schoolgirl during the 1956 uprising and experienced the so-called soft dictatorship that followed. However, my perspective is always personal; the great historical events only feature as much as they touched my life. There is more emphasis on everyday life and the small human dramas that shaped my fate and those of my friends. It was also fate that made me to give up my homeland and take a flight to England.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 28, 2006
• ISBN: 9781465318992

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Copyright © 2007 by Mia Nadasi.

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Contents

WARM UP

PREPARATION

ACT I PAS DE DEUX

I AM ON

FROM THE BAR TO THE CENTRE

ANNUSKA

THALIA APPEARS

LONG LEGS AT LAST

SENTIMENTAL TRAINING

GRAND JETÉ TO FAME

LEARNING TO BALANCE

ENTER THE REAL PRINCE

JUMPING UP IS EASY, LANDING IS DIFFICULT

ENTER THE WIZARD

THE DREAM-SEASON

CHASSE TO THE RIGHT AND BOWING OUT

CURTAIN CALL

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PIROUETTES AND PASSIONS

FOR MY GIRLS: ANITA AND CARRIE

WARM UP

Though both my parents were in show business their timing in terms of my appearance was appalling. I was born towards the end of the Second World War on the 15th February 1944 in Budapest. Unfortunately this major event was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that war was raging in Europe. The daily paper Népszava reported heavy defensive battles on the Eastern front, though the city still tried to keep up the semblance of normality. On that night there were performances in seventeen theatres; at the Opera House Verdi’s Don Carlos was on, and a famous actress was giving a recital of chansons. However, more important were the notices in the papers, what to do in the event of an air raid. If this was not enough, the weather was awful too. Snowstorms, worse than any in living memory, were reported from the south of the country.

Within a month of my birth Budapest was under siege. On the 15th of March my parents gave a dinner for 40 people to celebrate my christening, and that was the last happy day they experienced for a long time. On the 19th of March the Germans occupied Budapest; the marching boots could be heard on the fashionable Andrássy Boulevard, where we lived. German tanks rolled up, their heavy chains left deep indentations in the asphalt. It was a miracle they did not fall through the road as, under the Andrássy Boulevard, runs the oldest underground train in Europe in a rather shallow tunnel. From this date, Budapest became a frontline and the bombing became more regular. Curfew and blackouts were operating.

Despite all this I was a wanted late child; I would call it a last minute child. My father, a well-known ballet master was over fifty and my mother, an ex-dancer and ballet mistress, thirty-eight when I made my appearance—nowadays no age at all, but then, punctuated by bombs falling out of the sky, rather a dangerous undertaking. However, they were keen. The baby they had before me, also a girl, was stillborn; they only had time to christen her Sylvia, after the Delibes ballet, my father had just choreographed for the Opera House. With parents like these I should have been born in a basket in the wings, but instead it was the usual hospital job. After my birth though, I spent rather a lot of time in a Moses basket, as it was the most convenient way to grab me and run down to the cellar during the frequent air raids.

Our large, luxury apartment was situated in the heart of Budapest, opposite the Opera House. The beautiful building was named Drechsler Palace and on the ground floor there was a famous coffee house. My parents rented a suite of rooms on the first floor, the full length of the building, which served both as our ballet school and our apartment. The school, a private enterprise that flourished before the war, functioned separately from my father’s employment as ballet master of the State Ballet Company. The Drechsler Palace had extensive cellars and this is where many of the inhabitants of the building spent the greater part of the siege. It was reasonably spacious and considered safe, but naturally dark and damp. The street siren was just underneath our bedroom window and my parents tried to catch the news on the radio before the bombers got to Budapest—hoping they could rush down to the cellar before the sound of the siren, which might have made me a nervous wreck in the future. Unfortunately, on one of those occasions I tumbled out of the basket and rolled down the stairs ending up with a huge bump on my head. Later, a Russian soldier who came to our cellar took pity on me and gave my mother some groceries,—quite a historical event, as the Soviet forces were more renowned for pillaging and raping women, than being kind to babies. The bump, fortunately, left me undamaged, though it did give me a rather dramatic appearance.

The story of my parents was instrumental not only in my existence but in the way I turned out and my way of thinking. Without doubt they were and are (even from the other world) the strongest influence on my life. There isn’t a single day when I don’t think about them or talk to them in my head. One of the greatest Hungarian poets, Attila József wrote a beautiful line about his parents: When I move, they embrace again.

PREPARATION

At the end of the 19th century Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1896 on the millennium of the Magyar tribe settling in the Carpathian basin Emperor Franz Joseph inaugurated a celebratory exhibition. In Budapest Europe’s first underground train line opened.

My father and my mother were both artists and they loved dancing, their chosen profession, with a passion. They taught me that if I had troubles in my life, in art I would always find solace. This wasn’t an altogether sound advice, because I found that my chosen path, acting, caused me more heartache than anything else. The frustration of not being able to practice it gave me a lot of unhappy times. The possibility that you could be barred from your profession by unemployment did not occur to my parents.

They came from such different backgrounds and it was their devotion to classical ballet that united them.

FERI

My father’s past was truly Dickensian and if I wrote his story as fiction it probably would be considered unlikely. His grandfather from his mother’s side was of Czech/German origin by the name of Nagel and he owned a circus. He married in Budapest a girl named Kramer, who was also of German stock. They made a decent living through their business until a series of tragedies struck the family. One of their sons fell off the trapeze and died; shortly after, the circus burnt down and they went bankrupt. The father of the family became the head of a group of lumberjacks, who did casual work on large country estates. On one of these estates in Slovenia his daughter Klara, the future mother of my father was born. Unfortunately Nagel lost his arm in an accident. After this he became an alcoholic and eventually disappeared altogether. The response from his wife was to jump into a well and drown herself. It all sounds like some tragic folk-ballad. Thus Klara, the grandmother I never met, was orphaned as a child and from the age of ten had to fend for herself.

As a young girl she fell in love with a violinmaker’s apprentice and they set up house together. When she became pregnant the young man told her that they could not get married because he was also carrying on with the violin-maker’s daughter and he had got her pregnant too. Consequently, he would marry the richer girl because that way he would inherit the business. This is how my father became an illegitimate child. He was named Ferenc, the diminutive of which is Feri. Klara could not keep the baby; the year was 1893, and single mothers were about a hundred years from being accepted by society. Neither were there decent institutions, especially in Hungary, where babies could be fostered. A charity called the ‘Green Cross’ placed babies with peasant families and Klara gave the baby Feri into their care. Meanwhile she worked as a maid and did not care much what happened to the baby. Feri was placed with various families; one of them lived in the godforsaken small village of Kóka. There he lived half—starving, dressed in rags, without shoes, existing like many dirt-poor peasant children—the great artist of the future, the father of Hungarian classical ballet! Amazingly, he remembered his days in Kóka with affection. He mentioned only one bad experience, when the other kids made him smoke a pipe of potato skins and he became very ill. This rural idyll ended when Feri’s godmother, Mrs. Szavics, who also worked as a domestic servant went to visit him. It was winter and she found the little boy barefoot, covered in sores and living in such poverty that she could not bring herself to leave him there. She packed him up and took him back to Budapest. At the time, Klara and Mrs. Szavics were sharing accommodation but while my father only had good words for his godmother, his relationship remained strained and distant with his mother all through his life. Every Sunday the two women and the little boy went to the coffee-house round the corner, where stand-up comics were performing. Feri was smitten by the jokes and the dance routines and decided that he wanted to be an ‘artist’ like that. At home he copied the comics and the two women fell about laughing at his performance.

The threesome arrangement ended when Klara was given a very good live-in position to look after a wealthy family’s children. Frequently she had to go abroad with them and Mrs. Szavics was left alone with the boy. It was often a great problem looking after him. Then, one day, fate made a significant appearance. Godmother was offered a position where she could take the little boy with her. The employer was Jakab Holczer, a ballet-master!—his wife the Italian ballerina Henrietta Spinzi. Their apartment was right in the middle of the theatre district in Nagymező Street. At the beginning Feri was sleeping on top of the coalbunker but, since God blessed him with a sunny nature, he soon charmed everyone in the household with his large, smiling brown eyes. At the Holczer household a new chapter started in his life.

‘‘‘Uncle’ Holczer, as he called him was in charge of the ballet company at the Municipal Orfeum, today the Operetta Theatre. He also taught at home, but most of the classes were run by his wife, Madame Spinzi. What a magnificent name! There was also a lodger in the apartment, a young doctor, called Nagy. He took a shine to the little boy and talked to him about foreign lands, gave him tuition in mathematics and geography. In the latter he became more knowledgeable than a lot of well-educated people. Feri considered school a necessary nuisance. He was sitting quietly at his place but his thoughts were elsewhere. During the breaks he entertained his classmates with jokes and mime performances.

At home, the eight year-old boy was watching the dance classes through a keyhole and tried to copy the movements in the lobby. He especially liked the turns. Later on he became a virtuoso in pirouettes and somehow he could pass this ability to his students as well—including me! At the time, his ardent efforts only resulted in a hole in the carpet, where he tried to practice the turns.

It was not his dancing talent that bore early successes but his alertness and his streetwise attitude. He was responsible for two major developments. He tracked down his father, who by then had his own violin making shop and three sons. Feri went to the shop and presented himself with the cry: You are my daddy! Jeromos Cigl was a pragmatic man, gave in to fate and sent the apprentice for cake and chocolate. From that time, they kept in touch, even though it never became a proper relationship between father and son. He did send Feri to a violin teacher, who owed him some money, but the boy hated the lessons and, as he was used to being independent, announced that he would not go to any further lessons. We did have a viola at home, cherished by my father, which was made by my grandfather.

Feri’s other initiative had more influence on his future life. He heard that they were looking for boy dancers at the Municipal Orfeum for a new production. At the time, the custom was that at the end of the operetta a complete little ballet would be performed. In the latest one, some children were needed. He went for the audition and, miraculously, he was chosen. At the rehearsals he jumped around with such enthusiasm that the director of the theatre and Holczer decided to give him a solo. This is how it came to pass that he was dancing on the stage before having taken a single lesson. He was given a beautiful, gold-braided hussar uniform lined with red silk, which was made for him in Vienna. Without doubt he had arrived at the first high point in his hitherto turbulent young life.

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Feri’s stage debut aged 11

Naturally, godmother came to the theatre to watch Feri’s debut, but she was in such a state of excitement that when he appeared she fainted. When she came to, Feri had finished his momentous contribution.

After his success at the theatre, the doors of the ballet studio opened to him. Mr Holczer and his wife taught him free of charge. Meanwhile he became part of the family and a general fixer. It was Feri who had to fetch Holczer from the coffee house when he stayed too long playing cards; it was he, who acquired Henrietta’s hair dye, which was a state secret. He opened the door to the pupils and the patients of Dr. Nagy. When he got older he even got involved in negotiating contracts. Apparently, Holczer could not speak a single language properly; he mixed German, Hungarian and Yiddish in a very original manner. Feri learnt a lot of great Yiddish jokes from him, which remained in his repertoire all through his life. He also learnt German. There was a rumour that he was the illegitimate son of Holczer, because his mannerisms and his way of speaking became very like the old ballet master’s. As the years passed, his school became aware of his appearances at the Orfeum. To avoid contamination of the other pupils he was immediately expelled! His mother was living in Italy at the time running a small pensione and, when she heard the news, she sent a message that Feri should become a locksmith apprentice. Naturally, Feri and godmother ignored this. They both knew by then, what profession it was that he would follow. After all, he became a favourite with the Orfeum audiences, where he was given a role in every ballet.

When he was sixteen his ballet master started a brave venture. He organized a travelling company and took them to Russia. Feri was the only male member of the company; at the time male dancers were a rarity. They spent three years in Russia. During this time he grew up and changed from boy to man. He experienced and learnt a great deal, he was looking at the world with open eyes and began to form his own ideas. He had always been a mature and independent boy because of his disadvantaged start but while travelling in Russia he developed the goals, he wanted to achieve in his art and his life.

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Feri before setting off to Russia

To be able to visit Russia in 1910 for a ballet dancer was an enormous good fortune. The Diaghilev Company were rehearsing for their second Parisian tour at the Marinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, but for some contractual reason they were thrown out from there and came to work at the theatre where the Holczer Ballet was appearing. Feri could experience personally the way this historic company was rehearsing. He was sitting in the dark auditorium in awe. The famous dancer-choreographer, Michael Fokine was creating his ballet ‘Le Carnaval’ for Schumann’s music. He was making up the steps on the spot, changing them again and again until he was satisfied. Diaghilev often watched the rehearsals for hours on end and while he was watching, he ordered food and drinks in the auditorium. Feri also observed Nijinsky warming up for class. His stocky figure appeared, on his face a mysterious smile. He placed a chair centre-stage. After a few seconds of hovering he jumped over the back of the chair keeping his legs straight. He landed on the other side lightly, without any effort. He repeated this routine several times. It took Feri’s breath away. Holczer had a lot of contacts and friends in Russia. On one occasion Nijinsky’s father visited him at his hotel room; he had left his family by then, but was very proud of his successful son. Holczer had a great idea and introduced Feri to the legendary ballet master Checcetti, who agreed to teach him. Whenever Feri had the time he went to his classes, where the great dancers of the world also practised; Karsavina, Pavlova and Nijinsky were among them. These classes and the atmosphere of St. Petersburg were the decisive influence on him becoming a devotee of classical ballet, the art he served all his life.

After St. Petersburg, the Holczer company toured Moscow, Kiev (where Feri won a Ukrainian dance competition) and Odessa. Once, in Moscow, after their regular performance they had to put on a private show for a Russian Duke. The performance was followed by a banquet where the Duke sat next to Feri. Though a lot of vodka was consumed the Duke never made any improper proposals to any of the ballerinas—much to Feri’s surprise. Perhaps he was more interested in Feri, but he behaved as a perfect gentleman. The Duke wore a simple Russian shirt, while his secretary was dressed in top hat and tails. The following morning everybody received presents; Feri’s reward was a gold watch.

Another contrasting episode highlights the lawlessness of Czarist Russia. One night Feri visited a nightclub with some other dancers. At one of the tables, sat some army officers, who were rather worse for drink. They called the violinist of the orchestra, a Jewish boy to their table and asked for a specific song. The boy said, he did not know it. The response from one of the officers was to draw his sword and stab him. The musician died on the spot. Feri and the dancers learnt later from the other musicians that the officer received no punishment for his act.

Feri learnt to speak quite a bit of Russian and continued to be the fixer. He got a huge goose for the company for Christmas, which he carried through the icy winds of the Russian winter. Three years passed before they went back to Hungary. It was typical of the Russian bureaucracy that at the end of their tour they all had to travel to Kiev to collect their passports, which had been taken away, when they started the tour.

Before the tour ended, the mother of one of the dancers, who travelled with them chaperoning her daughter, approached Feri with a surprising confession. Apparently, her daughter had fallen deeply in love with the only male member of the company, Feri, and what was he going to do about it? He was very surprised, as he had not noticed any such sentiments. He had a good chummy relationship with all the girls and the fact that one of the best dancers in the group, Aranka Lieskowsky, had different designs on him, completely escaped him. Nevertheless, he was flattered by the feelings of the shapely, slightly older girl.

When they got back to Budapest they started working as partners. Feri choreographed some new numbers and they received a very advantageous contract from a newly formed cabaret, the Renaissance Theatre. It was an elegant, fashionable venue right opposite the Opera House, behind the Drechsler Palace, our future home. The young couple brought freshness on a high artistic level to the programme.

One day a young advertising agent (yes, they existed even then) presented himself in Feri’s dressing room. Your place is not here but over there, he said, pointing towards the Opera House. It turned out he had two sisters who were dancers in the Opera Company. The young man suggested that Feri should audition for Nicolas Guerra, an Italian ballet master, who was running the company at the time. Feri took his chance.

He presented himself at the Opera at a pre-arranged time and knocked on Guerra’s door. Go and change, said the ballet master, but Feri was so shy he didn’t dare to open any of the doors and was still standing on the corridor when Guerra came back. The master probably would have got rid of him but the prima ballerina of the time, Emilia Nirschy was with him and she whispered to Guerra in French, Let’s have a look at him and have a good laugh. Feri, who dabbled a little in many languages, understood the sentence.

They entered the studio where Feri hastily put on his ballet shoes in the corner. Guerra asked for a few simple steps, which were easily executed by the young dancer, after all at the classes of Spinzi and Checcetti he learnt the style of the same Italian school that Guerra was representing. The master asked for more complicated combinations and Feri did not always understand the French name of the steps but once he was shown them he excelled in the execution. The prima ballerina forgot that she wanted to laugh. Finally Feri prepared for his pièce de resistance, the turns. He took a grand preparation, miscalculated and fell flat on his face. Angry and red, he tried again and executed five beautiful pirouettes. Guerra shouted, That’s enough, follow me to my room.

He was offered a contract then and there, as solo dancer. Emilia Nirschy put on her most charming smile and asked whether Feri would like to partner her during some summer engagements. The only cloud was financial: the opera contract offered much less money than he earned at the cabaret; on top of it Guerra asked for a substantial sum to further train the young dancer. (His salary was two hundred and fifty Krones per month and he had to give a hundred to Guerra). Another stipulation was that for some months he could not appear on stage until the master agreed for him to do so. By then Feri had his own apartment, where he invited his godmother to live and the marriage to Aranka was also on the cards. In other words he had responsibilities. Nevertheless, he accepted the contract without thinking. He changed his German sounding family name Nagel to the Hungarian Nadasi and thus the career of Ferenc Nadasi, solo dancer of the Hungarian Royal Opera had started.

He appeared on stage earlier than Guerra anticipated. The Bartered Bride was on the programme when one of the solo dancers fell ill. Guerra was abroad and the stage manager called Feri for the performance. He knew the part but never had any rehearsals and was not familiar with the stage. For the grand pas de deux he appeared at the back of the stage while his partner was waiting at the front. There were only a few bars for him to locate her, scramble over and start the dance. After that everything went well and Guerra’s fury was in vain: he had to realize that Nadasi was ready for the opera stage.

Soon after this event Feri married Aranka Lieszkovsky and she also joined the company. In a short time Feri got into the good