Dancing the Nutcracker for Charis
By Patricia Karagozian
It was a Saturday afternoon in December of 1969. I was secretly very pleased to be dancing in the Snowflake Ballet for this matinee performance of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s Nutcracker. Being one of the smaller dancers of the company, I was often cast in animal roles, like the “King Mouse”, but the snow scene was special to me. The music was in my opinion, the most beautiful part of the Nutcracker Ballet, and scurrying about in a white tutu, I felt that at seventeen years old, I had really become a dancer.
Charis and Bill were coming to this performance. She had fallen quite ill again. I had always known Charis somewhere between being bedridden and hopefully getting better. And yet, she was so bright and shining, even when her wrists were so thin, or her face swollen with her medication. She always had that generous, sincere smile, laughing eyes, and laughter like bells… in spite of so many hardships, so young.
The company performed at the Pittsburgh Playhouse and after the performance Bill and Charis took me home. It was about a 45 minute drive under normal circumstances, but it was snowing quite hard, the roads were icy, and traffic was heavy with Saturday afternoon Christmas shoppers.
Charis commented on the performance. She didn’t approve of the lead ballerina, Jane Hillyer, who had danced the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Jane Hillyer was a very high-strung woman, who’s dancing was rather staccato, lacking in lyricism. She danced as if she were frustrated, showing off her fouette turns with a rather cold and hard technique. Charis was annoyed with her lack of musicality in the Sugar Plum Pas de Deux. Her phrasing was musically false, dancing in a way that totally ignored the crescendos of Tchaikovsky’s music. Charis’ fine musical sensitivity was too strong to accept such a lack of artistic quality.
Snow flurries were pounding on the windshield, and as Bill wrestled with the icy roads and heavy traffic, Charis’ nose started to bleed. From the back seat, I could see Bill, very worried, dividing his attention between the slippery, hilly roads and watching over Charis while she tried to convince us that she was all right. But her nosebleed wouldn’t stop and Bill drove directly to the hospital instead of to the Greenwood home in the North Hills.
For me, this day marked the beginning of the end. I do remember that Charis had insisted upon coming home from the hospital for Christmas Eve to sleep that night on the living room couch. I think that she knew that this would be her last Christmas and she wanted to be with family.
The following February, Dad drove me down to see her in the hospital so that I could give her the birthday card I had made for her. Leaving the hospital room I said “See you later”. She serenely smiled and softly repeated my words, “Yeah, see you later”. I’m convinced that she knew at that very moment that this was a farewell.