We are standing all the way to the rear, behind the stage, safely out of the way of Company members hurrying to their next entrance and stage crew moving scenery, and the girls are waiting for their curtain call.  I am a BRAVO backstage chaperone, responsible for the children’s safe and timely presence throughout the performance.

Amoeba-like, the pink tulle clusters form, drift and re-form as Delibes’ music billows back to us. Over here, seven students and the single lavender-clad page play “telephone.” “Purple pigs party all night” becomes “Gob-stoppers stop on the green light.” Others stretch, whisper, and discuss their on-stage coordination. These students are pros at quiet self-entertainment.

Suddenly they are all attention as they hear a few key bars of music. They queue, two-by-two, for their curtain call and we’re off, into the wings for the finale. Lights halo tutu skirts as the girls wait in the wings, quietly mimicking the claps and jumps of the jesterettes on stage, then, on beat, they run into the lights.

Maria Kochetkova and Gennadi Nedvigin in Balanchine and Danilova's Coppelia (copyright Erik Tomasson)

In the production, the two little boys mimic their elders with some mock fighting. Marty included the girls, too, as he taught the boys their moves. “En garde! Now, advance! Cut one! Cut two!” he instructed the 11-year olds.

The children, with their ballet training, caught on quickly as Marty taught them the basic choreography for a good fight. Advance and retreat, lunge, evasion, and then some fancier work: “moullinet” (a windmilling of the weapon) and “balestra” (described by Marty as a swashbuckling kick).

Safety concerns were not overlooked. Marty taught the children to point their weapons at very specific zones of upper arm and thigh. “I’ve got to have you onstage for the next show!” he reminded his students.

Later, after the children were costumed and waiting in the wings for the Act II rehearsal to begin, I had a chance to chat with Marty, who comes to us from The Society of American Fight Directors. “This is stage combat, not competitive fencing, so it’s meant to create the illusion of a fight,” Marty told me. He led me to the rack of weapons, part of SFB’s prop department, and explained that they had matched the fight moves and the weapons used, to the time period in which the original play was set.

So when you attend SFB’s Romeo & Juliet watch for the weaponry (that is, if you can spare an iota of attention from the sheer drama of the sword-fighting), you’ll see a number of different weapons. The older lords use the broadsword, reflecting their generation. Most of the young men fight with a rapier in one hand and a short parrying dagger in the other. The item that looks like a small shield is a buckler. However, Tybalt, who exemplifies the French school of fighting, carries a main-gauche for his parrying dagger. The main-gauche (or “left hand” in French) has a broad metal piece to protect the hand.

Speaking of metal, I asked Marty about the manufacture of these weapons. They are historical replications made by American Fencer Supplies and sword maker Neil Massey from Rogue Steel Co. in Chicago, carefully maintained and repaired by our prop department. The leather scabbards were especially created by a leather-worker. At that point Assistant Stage Manager Tiffani Snow came over and said “You’re wanted on stage,” to Marty, leaving me to reflect, once again, on all the wonderful experiences that have come my way through BRAVO volunteering!

Outside in the hallway, a cluster of pale blue-leotarded girls peeked in. “I’m in Club Nut! Are you?”

Today when our youngest cast members leave the Opera House after the matinee, they will be walked across the street to the ballet building and taken to Lucy and Fritz Jewett Studio. They’ll enter a huge room decorated with light-trimmed pine garlands wound around all the barres, two tables piled high with supplies for the day’s craft project, and a long buffet table where lunch will soon be served.

Welcome to Club Nut!

SF Ballet School students are a crucial resource for SF Ballet's Nutcracker! (© Erik Tomasson)

Club Nut is a service provided to the families of the student dancers, organized and staffed by ballet school parents and BRAVO volunteers. It is a safe and fun place for the children to rest, eat and play between their appearances in the matinee and evening performances of Nutcracker. For most of the children it is also a highlight of their holiday season!

San Francisco Ballet Students work on gift bags at Club Nut in December 2006. San Francisco Chronicle photo by Kat Wade

Imagine a huge, bright and warm room filled with 50 of your friends. In it are stacks of board games, friendly parents helping you do a craft project, a movie to watch, and a hot lunch. There’s a large, carpeted area where you can play, lounge and stretch with your cast-mates. Today’s menu is chicken-fried rice, macaroni and cheese, salad and fruit and upcoming meals will include spaghetti and pizza. For crafts, we’ll be decorating holiday stockings, and making lavender sachets, beaded ornaments, and quilled-paper cards.

Welcome to Club Nut!

(View a video about Club Nut made by the San Francisco Chronicle in December 2006.)

Methods:  Randomized, retrospective written survey posing three questions.

Materials:  Paper, pen, and goodwill.

Results:  BRAVO members love BRAVO and SF Ballet!

Well, we knew that already.  But here are some of their thoughts:

• “I love ballet and SF Ballet.”
• “My daughter started dancing here…I joined [BRAVO] when she was in Club Nut.”
• “I joined decades ago, when SF Ballet was in the red, and ballerinas were on Union Square asking for funds.”
• “I had retired…we had been subscribers for some time and loved what SFB does.”

What do these ballet lovers enjoy assisting with? One answer is a good summary: “I enjoy all activities in which I get involved throughout the years.”

And there were these specific examples: The Shop, being a Nutcracker backstage chaperone, the Nutcracker Children’s Lunch, and the Opening Night Gala.  And this one: “Working with the wardrobe staff gave me a peek into that dynamic world.”

A few closing comments:

• “This is such a great volunteer organization and the Ballet is such a wonderful place to work, I am delighted to be a part of it!”
• “I love listening to the dancers at the meetings. What a treat!”  [Last week our guests were Principal Dancers Sofiane Sylve and Pascal Molat, who talked with us about their training and history, favorite roles, personal challenges and goals.]
• “I really appreciate all that’s offered to BRAVO volunteers; you make it well worth our while!”
• “I love the SF Ballet ambiance, the staff is very appreciative, and I am delighted to be of help!”

As you can see, it doesn’t get better than that!  THANK YOU to all 200+ members of BRAVO, who work behind the scenes to help make SF Ballet the vibrant, successful organization that it is.

The reward for our labors was to see the activity happening elsewhere in the building, as Angela and I ran errands for staff.  On the second floor, the hallway was filled with students, most of them stretched out in impossible positions on the floor as they waited for their next Summer Session class, or watched older students work on learning variations. With piano music coming from every room and the chatter of students, it was a lively and heartwarming scene.

On the fourth floor, Isabelle Fokine (yes, the grand-daughter of Mikhail!) was coaching Petrouchka, while down the hall Christopher Wheeldon worked on his new ballet. My eyes filled with tears at the beauty of the dancers moving to that music . . . and my incredible good fortune to work with this organization.

BRAVO is the Ballet Resource and Volunteer Organization of SF Ballet.  We have about 240 members who put in over 10,000 hours annually doing every conceivable form of volunteer assistance to SF Ballet.  To find out more, go to bravosfb.org.

Students in class during the 2008 Summer Session. (© Erik Tomasson)

If you’ve looked in the back page of the Ballet’s program book, you will have noticed listings for SF Ballet’s volunteer organizations: the Auxiliary, ENCORE!, and BRAVO.  The Ballet Resource And Volunteer Organization (BRAVO) is a group of over 200 loyal SFB fans who do what we can to help, whether it’s stuffing envelopes, assisting in the Ballet Shop, or chaperoning.  We’ve been known to pull weeds at the student residence, greet visiting dancers at SFO, and give tours of the ballet building; but usually we are the smiling faces checking guests in to SFB events or preparing gift bags for the Auxiliary Fashion Show.

Right now we are getting organized for SF Ballet School’s 2009 Student Showcase. This is a fun and heart-warming event, the crème de la crème of student performances and it’s overseen by SF Ballet School Associate Director Lola de Avila. The curtain opens on ranks of impeccably clad and positioned small students of Girls’ Level 2 and the program shows how each level advances, until the oldest students perform repertory works. BRAVO volunteers will be there, getting all the students to the stage in time and supervising their departure back to their proud parents, in addition to taking tickets at the door, and ushering.

Students of the San Francisco Ballet School perform in the 2008 Student Showcase. (© Erik Tomasson)

If you are a BRAVO member, expect to volunteer alongside friendly people who share your love of ballet. You can also expect to hear a Company member speak at each of our membership meetings.  If you go to our training session first, you can expect to move around backstage with a group of young soldiers or butterflies during Nutcracker.  This March we had a one-time-only special event: we celebrated the 90^th birthday of one of our founding members with a performance by the San Francisco Ballet School Trainees!

The Trainees, led by Trainee Program Supervisor Jean-Yves Esquerre, performed four pieces for us, up close and personal in the Lew Christensen Studio.  We watched two students sail through the exquisite nuances of the “Bluebird” pas de deux from Tomasson’s The Sleeping Beauty, as well as his moving Handel, a Celebration.  The music of JS Bach came to life in a duet from 7 for Eight, also choreographed by Tomasson.  Our show came to a stunning, exciting end with Fractals by School Faculty Instructor Parrish Maynard.  The Trainees showed every ounce of their talent, fitness, hard work, musicality, dramatic attitude, and did I mention the results of their years of determination, perseverance, sheer hard work, and intense love of ballet?  It was a fantastic evening and 70 BRAVO members left the studio knowing exactly why we love being part of the SFB Family.

Members of the 2008-2009 Trainee Program (photo by Olivier Wecxsteen)

To find out more about BRAVO, please visit www.bravosfb.org.

When I arrived at my seat, a small child dressed in white sat next to me, examining the little gifts she had received at the door, a part of the festivities for the first Family Performance at the Ballet. Curious, I said, “May I see your little mouse?” The woman on her other side said, “She doesn’t speak any English.” It turned out that this little girl had moved from Russia to the United States only three weeks earlier.

The three-year-old sat quietly, absorbed in the action of the party scene. Suddenly, the set transformed. The Christmas tree started to grow. All of the furniture became huge. It towered over us in the front row. A mouse appeared. The child next to me froze. Another mouse crept out.

I glanced at my seatmate to see how she was taking it. The child’s tiny hands were motioning the mice away from Clara. And it was like that all through the fight scene. She worried when the Mouse King appeared. Her little fist delicately pumped the air when the Nutcracker Prince brought on his battalions of soldiers. She turned from side to side as the battle raged.

Then, it was over. Clara’s Prince had won. The stage was bare, save for Clara and Uncle Drosselmeyer. This made my little neighbor unhappy. Was she worried that the performance was over? Was the bare stage frightening? There was no way for her to tell anyone. But her mother reassured her, Drosselmeyer performed his magic, and the stage was transformed into the ethereal beauty of the snow scene.

My little neighbor was entranced all over again. She sat right up when Principal Dancers Yuan Yuan Tan and Tiit Helimets appeared as the Queen and King of Snow. As far as I could tell, though she loved the snowflakes and the snowstorm itself; she recognized that something special was happening when Yuan Yuan danced.

Yuan Yuan Tan performs in Tomasson's Nutcracker. (© Erik Tomasson)

As the intermission came to a close, my little neighbor returned with her own wooden Nutcracker. I learned now that she had been adopted by a San Franciscan family three week ago. Now I understood why her mother did not speak Russian to her. The child had recently made this huge change in her life and now sat in the front row of the Opera House watching a ballet that had originated in St. Petersburg, Russia.

A little finger gently poked my arm. She wanted to show me her doll. She stroked his felt moustache and indicated I should do the same. The bubble wrap was still around the doll, which she tenderly arranged under his chin like a blanket. She pointed to the shiny metal plate at the base. “Nutcracker,” I said, pointing to the word.

Then, I had an idea. I turned my program to the title page and pointed to the same word in its distinctive label. “Nutcracker,” I said. We each pointed to the two Nutcracker words while I repeated them aloud.

“Nutcracka,” said the child in a soft voice.