Sulamith Messerer

Dance Magazine, Dec, 2004 by Azary Messerer

Sulamith Messerer became a prima ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet at the age of 20 when she volunteered, without rehearsal, to stand in for the injured Ekaterina Geltser as Kitri in Don Quixote. Three years later, she and her brother Asaf, a dancer and choreographer, became the first Soviet dancers to perform in Western Europe, to rave reviews.

Apart from Kitri in Don Quixote, which was her favorite role (she danced it in besieged Moscow in 1941 to keep up the morale of the Russian troops), Sulamith was also known for her ebullient Zarema in The Fountain off Bakhchisarai, her vivacious Lise in La Fille mal gardee, and her heroic Jeanne in The Flames of Paris, the role for which she was awarded a Stalin's prize.

Sulamith was heroic in real life too. In the midst of Stalin's Great Terror, she undertook several journeys to a gulag in Kazakhstan and managed to rescue her sister Rakhil with her baby son Azari Plissetski (now a choreographer and teacher with Rudra Bejart Studio-School in Lausanne). While they were in exile, she raised Rakhil's daughter, Maya Plisetskaya, who became a prima ballerina assoluta of the Bolshoi Ballet (see excerpt from I, Maya Plisetskaya, DM, October 2001). Sulamith demonstrated the same indomitable spirit in 1980 when, at the age of 71, she decided to defect to the West with her son Mikhail (a renowned teacher with The Royal Ballet).

Sulamith's teaching career spanned almost 70 years. In Russia, in the 1950s and 1960s, she took 11-year-old girls and mentored them through graduation. One year, Sulamith asked that her school do 17 performances of The Nutcracker just so that all of her students would get the chance to dance the role of Clara. "All my girls are capable to be Clara. I cannot discriminate," she said.

In 1961 Sulamith founded the Tchaikovsky Classical Ballet School in Japan (now the Tokyo Ballet) and staged 20 ballets there--she spoke fluent Japanese. In 1996 Emperor Akihito awarded her Japan's highest civilian honor, The Sacred Treasure Gold Rays.

For the last 20 years Sulamith taught at The Royal Ballet and RB School. In 2000 Sulamith was awarded an Order of the British Empire for her contribution to the art of dance.

Sulamith compared teaching to the work of a doctor, prescribing movement for the relaxation of overstressed muscles. Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, Sylvie Guillem, Darcy Bussell, and Antoinette Sibley followed grueling performances with her "healing" class. She formed exercises as beautiful dances, paying special attention to flowing port de bras. She also asked dancers "to take their mind off the hard work of the legs, giving one's soul to each combination." Sibley credits Sulamith's daily class with prolonging her career 10 years. A few months before her death last June, at the age of 95, Sulamith was teaching and going regular to the swimming pool. (She had been a Russian swimming champion in her youth.) Her dedication to excellence and generosity of spirit touched the lives of several generations of dancers.

Azary Messerer teaches literature at Touro College. He is Sulamith's nephew.