sulamith_messerer

Sulamith Messerer

August 27, 1908 - June 3, 2004

Sulamith Messerer , Russian-born ballet dancer and teacher devoted her life to the Bolshoi Ballet as a student, prima ballerina, teacher, choreographer, and artistic ambassador until she defected to the West (1980); she then settled in London, where she remained a guest teacher with the Royal Ballet School. A vibrant and athletic dancer, Messerer joined the Bolshoi Ballet School in 1920. She abruptly moved up from the corps de ballet in 1926 when she substituted for an injured soloist, and within three years she was one of the Bolshoi's leading dancers. In the 1930s she was allowed to travel outside the Soviet Union with her brother and frequent partner, Asaf (who also became a teacher), and in the early 1960s she was sent to Tokyo to found the first ballet school in Japan. Messerer was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1946 and was declared a People's Artist of the Russian S.F.S.R. in 1962. In 2000 Messerer was made OBE.

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Obituary (The Times)

Article (Dance Magazine)

Sulamith Mikhailovna Messerer (Russian: Суламифь Михайловна Мессерер, August 27, 1908 - June 3, 2004) was a Russian ballerina and choreographer who laid the foundations for the classical ballet in Japan.

Sulamith studied in the Moscow Ballet School under Vasily Tikhomirov and Elisabeth Gerdt and danced in the Bolshoi Theatre from 1926 until 1950. In 1933, she and her brother Asaf Messerer became the first Soviet dancers to tour Western Europe. She also practised swimming all her life and held the Soviet swimming record for the 100-metres crawl between 1927 and 1930.

After her sister Ra (Rachel or Rakhil) Messerer was purged, Sulamith legally adopted Ra's daughter Maya Plisetskaya, whom she coached into one of the greatest ballerinas ever. From 1950 until 1980, she was also active as a choreographer and teacher in the Bolshoi Theater. Since 1961, she spent much time in Tokyo, where she mastered Japanese and was instrumental in establishing the Tokyo Ballet.

In 1980, at the age of 72, she defected to Great Britain, where she continued to work as a much sought-after coach. Her many honours included the Stalin Prize (1946), the Order of the Sacred Treasures (1996), and the Order of the British Empire (2000).

Obituary From The Times

June 19, 2004

Dancer for the Bolshoi company and tireless ballet coach who was still at the barre at 95

SULAMITH MESSERER was already past 70 when she settled in London, and might understandably have felt like resting after a lifetime devoted as ballerina and as teacher to the development of the Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow. But she went on to nearly another quarter of a century teaching in Britain and abroad.

The Messerer family made a major contribution to Russian theatre in the 20th century. Sulamith’s older brother Asaf (1903-92) was especially distinguished. A pupil of Mikhail Mordkin (who had starred with both Diaghilev and Pavlova), he was for three decades a principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet and became their chief teacher, as well as an occasional choreographer. He pushed technique to a new level: his ten pirouettes and triple tours-en-l’air caused astonishment in Paris when he and Sulamith made a short West European tour in 1932, the first — and for two decades the only one — by Soviet dancers.

There was another older sister, Raisa, who acted in silent films and whose three children all went into ballet. The sons, Alexander and Azari Plisetsky, both had good careers, while the daughter, Maya Plisetskaya, became the great Russian ballerina of her age. Maya was brought up by Sulamith Messerer when Raisa was sent to a gulag.

However, this did not interrupt Messerer’s own career. She had been born in Moscow in 1908, studied at the Bolshoi school under the outstanding classical stars Vasili Tikhomirov and Ekaterina Gerdt, and had graduated into the company in 1926, where she, too, became a principal dancer.

Her first big role, after three years, was Lise in La Fille mal gardée, and some indication of the charm, humour and brilliance she must have developed in the part was given when she presented one of her pupils in a duet from it at a London charity gala in 1983. Roles like this, or Kitri in Don Quixote, offering vivacity and characterisation, were reported to suit her best, although she did undertake a wide variety of ballets. These includ ed The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, where she played the proud, jealous and murderous Zarema, queen of the harem. The harvest pas de deux in Giselle was widely thought her best pure dance role, but her short, wiry physique made her less apt for the big ballerina parts and, although she did tackle them, she was outshone by the Bolshoi’s illustrious stars Marina Semyonova, Olga Lepeshinskaya and, later, Galina Ulanova.

From about the age of 30, however, she began teaching, and progressed so well that she was given a full-time post when she stopped dancing. She received some guest engagements as a teacher and producer, too, notably in Japan, and when the Bolshoi Ballet played in Tokyo in 1980 she decided to stay in the West with her son Mikhail, who was also a character dancer.

They settled in London and her abilities quickly won her many teaching engagements, with both Royal Ballet companies and their school, and many other schools and companies. She was appointed OBE in 2000. Before leaving Moscow she had been named a People’s Artist of the Russian Republic (in 1962) and awarded a Lenin Prize.

Messerer never retired: even this year, at 95, she was guest teacher for Maurice Béjart’s company in Lausanne. Though frail and bent through age, she could become upright at the barre; she also went swimming every day, having been in her youth four times swimming champion of Russia. She is survived by another brother, Alexander, in Moscow, and by her son Mikhail, who is a guest teacher with the Royal Ballet.

Sulamith Mikhailovna Messerer, OBE, ballet dancer and teacher, was born on August 27, 1908. She died in London on June 3, 2004, aged 95.

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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.

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