My Fun Times as a Ballet Extra

This is sort of a follow-on article to the one I wrote about being an opera extra, My Adventures as an Opera Extra. I am especially interested in dance, and immensely enjoy dance performances, including ballet. I became interested in ballet after attending a performance in Los Angeles. Performing was none other than the great Mikhail Baryshnikov, possibly the greatest male ballet dancer of the 20th century. I immediately became engrossed in the performance.In fact, it inspired me to enroll in adult ballet classes. I had heard it said that ballet dancers make the difficult seem simple. After my classroom experiences, I can agree with that.

I found yet another way to experience ballet when I discovered that the local performing arts venues sometimes solicit supernumeraries — extras — for ballet performances. This is done for the large classical "theatrical" ballets. My boyfriend George and I volunteered a number of times for this, and we were chosen as "supers" on several occasions. Being a super for performing arts companies is a lot of fun and is a way you can support the arts in your area. As I said in my opera Hub, some of the most interesting stuff during a performance is what goes on backstage that the audience doesn't know about. There is actually something of an audition for supers. The ballet master wants certain types and sizes of people, and you must seem to be someone who can keep his wits on stage. Further, you must be able to fit into the costume, and costumes for ballet supers are definitely oriented toward slimmer people — fat people need not apply, unless it's for some special character role.

Here are some of George's and my "adventures" for different companies and ballets.

On one occasion, the National Ballet of Cuba showed up to do a Cuban folk ballet version of Cinderella. The Cuban National Ballet is a renowned company, a number of whose dancers have found their way into the major U.S. companies as featured or principal dancers. The company needed a number of extras for the ballroom scene. Almost no one in their company seemed to be able to speak English. Five other supers and I were chosen for the scene. The ballet mistress spoke little English, and when she got us supers together for the first rehearsal, we were rather surprised that she expected us to DANCE in the scene! There may have been some miscommunication and she thought she was getting dancers. As it turned out, I recognized most of the others from my ballet classes. Since the ballet mistress described the steps in French, the universal language of ballet steps and movements, we understood what she wanted, but one guy who'd never danced a step in his life quickly dropped out of the enterprise. The steps were simple (if you knew them). The supers were dancing briefly in the ballroom scene with the rest of the company, and then quickly exited through the wings. I can say without lying that I once danced with a professional ballet company!

Another odd thing happened during this company's visit. There is a local auxiliary of ballet lovers which provides a brunch at the venue for the dancers and anyone else involved in the production. It is good hot food, excellently presented. I've found by experience that few of the dancers from ballet companies and certainly not the principals show up at these affairs, instead they go out to a local restaurant for their meals. (The supers always showed up and dug in.) But the Cuban dancers almost all showed up! We were stunned to be sitting and eating at the same tables with world class dancers we'd seen perform. I offer two possible explanations for this (just speculation): (1) The dancers didn't have any money, or (2) their handlers kept a tight rein on them because they didn't want them to defect.

George had the "fun" in this ballet, performed by the American Ballet Theater. He was cast as the village "rat catcher," a character who appeared in the opening act. He was carrying fake plastic rats — he had rats hanging from the brim of his hat, rats tied to his belt, and was carrying a cage filled with captured rats.

The scene in which he appeared portrays a central European village in the 18th century. The prima ballerina portrays Manon, a young woman. She is dancing a duet, and there comes a point where she does an arabesque facing the rat catcher, and he shoves a rat right up to her nose, whereupon the villagers chase him off into the wings. Over the course of six performances, George shoved a rat in the face of three of the top ballerinas in the US at that time!

An odd thing happened during this ballet, too. Some young women supers, who had studied ballet, were used for a background peasant dance in one scene. George, waiting in the wings for his own entrance, saw one of the girls looking a little bewildered after they made their exit. He asked her what was wrong, and she said that they were dancing where they were told, and one of the male company dancers said to her (on stage!) "Get the f___ out of my way!"

With ballet companies, you can be on your own, as George experienced again in the same ballet. Near the end of this ballet, Manon is being kept in a penal colony in Louisiana (when it was still a French possession.) Out in the swamps, she has begun to hallucinate and see characters from her past. For this scene, the stage is nearly dark, and it was hard for George to find his way onto the stage. Several of the company had to enter the stage from the back center through a number of curtains, in the dark. George had to come last, and wearing a bulky costume he almost got lost in the multiple curtain layers during rehearsal. He asked a stage hand if he could hold the curtains for him at that point in the performances, and the stage hand said “no.” Reason? Quote: "It's not in my job description."

One time the Royal Danish Ballet was in town to perform A Folk Tale, a ballet from the standard repertoire by Danish choreographer August Bournonville. Neither George nor I were chosen as supers, however, George was chosen as an all-purpose male alternate (a “cover”) in case one of the male supers didn't show up on performance night. The ballet was in progress, and my boyfriend was sitting in the green room, a lounge area backstage. In fact he was sleeping. He was roused by someone from the company. They said a guy who played a troll didn't show up, and George would have to go on in his place. George said "What do I do? I didn't see him rehearse!" The response? "Act like a troll." As it turned out, the super showed at the very last minute, so George didn't have to imagine what he was supposed to do on stage!

George and I were in another production of Cinderella, this by the Pacific Northwest Ballet, a great regional company. I was a lady-in-waiting in the ballroom scene, with nothing much to do but stand around looking helpful. Once again, George was an alternate.

The afternoon of the first performance, he was called to come in as some male super had bailed. He was once more in the ballroom scene, this time as one of several "liverymen", or uniformed male servants, standing around the periphery of the ballroom. He was told that they had to just stand there for about one half-hour, and then leave at a certain point before the act ended. When he asked another super how he would know when to leave, the super promised that he would give a light stamp with his heel.

During the ballroom scene — which, by the way, had excellent couples dancing in beautiful costumes — one couple was seated near George. Another one of the male dancers was lingering near them, but they were just "stage talking" between themselves. The other guy got ticked and said in low tones "Hey! You're supposed to talk to me, too! What's the matter with you?" That's actually a very cleaned-up version of what he actually said, which was obscenity laced! Finally, George heard the one super give a little stamp, which he almost missed because he was engrossed in watching the dancers.

The American Ballet Theater appeared at the local venue another time to present the ballet Le Corsaire ("The Pirate"). George was cast as a townsman in a Middle Eastern village that got attacked by pirates. He was dressed in a really cool Arabian-style costume. Once again, he was briefly called on to do a few (technically) dance steps. In one scene, in the pirates’ hideaway, George and some other townsmen appear. They've been captured by the pirates for the purpose of carrying loot stolen from the town. The ballet master wanted them to do a "chain step," — a simple step — about 15 feet across the stage. George takes dance classes, but the other guys were clueless. George took it upon himself to drill the other guys in the step.

The neat thing about this ballet was that the performances were filmed by the New York City PBS affiliate WNET. George positioned himself mid-stage (half-way between the left and right sides of the stage) to minimize his chances of being cut from the act later during editing. They actually showed the ballet about a year later on TV in their Dance in America series.

We didn’t know when the program was going to air. One day, I was watching something on PBS, and there was an advertisement for the new season of Dance in America. I looked up, as the announcer mentioned Le Corsaire. Not only was George going to be seen in the performance, he was in the commercial! George figured he would have gotten edited out, but there he was, plain as day on stage!

Do you attend ballet performances? Did you study ballet as a child? (If you did, for how many years? Did you study it as an adult?

Please post a comment and tell everyone your story.