There was no ballet company in Boston when I (Karen) was growing up but I had ideas about ballet from my paper dolls:
These ideas were reinforced when I saw some ballet on TV.
But it was in October of 1965 that my very artistic neighbor friend, Elinor Shanbaum,
told me that we should see the visiting Royal Danish Ballet Company. And so
from row G of the Balcony of the Metropolitan Theatre, I experienced an amazing evening
of ballet, and
especially Erik Bruhn in Miss Julie. That made
me a ballet fan for life.
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Bruhn with Kirstin Simone (left) and with Veronika Mlakar |
In the next years the Royal Ballet, with Nureyev and Fontaine (below in Giselle),
came to Boston and New York for
weeks of dance. 
In New York at the same time at the American Ballet Theatre Bruhn was dancing with Carla Fracci (below in Giselle).
I took in as many as possible of the performances during these visits and was fortunate to have been introduced to the great classics with these amazing dancers and their company-mates in spectacularly good productions: Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, Giselle, La Sylphide. I saw my first Nutcracker in New York in July! Ah, those were the days! What an introduction to the art.
But then I thought my golden age of ballet fandom was ended. When I lived near Naples in Italy after my graduate school career, there was almost no ballet to see. When I returned to Boston in 1981 I saw Nureyev, who no longer made magic on stage, while Boston Ballet had grown up but not yet blossomed; I gave thanks for my memories. My father had Boston Ballet subscriptions for two front row seats (A5 and A7 in the Metropolitan Theatre, almost the same numbers as those he had held in the Boston Garden since 1950 for Celtics games: A5 and A6) and so I watched as the company began to flourish and then another golden age blossomed in Boston when the patient building work of E. Virginia Williams and Bruce Marks came to fruition.
The famous Glasnost Swan Lake
of 1990 (reprised in 1992), in which guest stars from the Bolshoi and Kirov partnered Boston principals,
coincided with the arrival in
Boston of a spectacular young pair of dancers, Trinidad Sevillano and Patrick Armand, and
revolutionized the company.
Bruce Marks had already hired Fernando Bujones as a permanent guest
artist. The exceptional technical ability, beauty and dramatic artistry of these
splendid dancers was the solid
core that solidified and enhanced the strong base of principals and corps dancers. Ever since
Boston has been a magnet for scores of young and mature dance artists.
My old memories were joined by many new totally
satisfying,
amazingly exciting performances. I began subscribing for myself in 1988 and I was soon seeing most
of the performances of each production. In May 1993 I brought Dan Williman, who was in town courting me,
to see the ballet. This was not a test. It was Fernando Bujones' last performance with the company.
He was dancing
in our beautiful Choo San Goh production of Romeo and Juliet with Karen Scalzitti.
Dan had never seen live ballet before and was not prepared to be awestruck, moved to tears and
made in one matinee into a ballet fan. But it happened just like that. What a moving
performance: the purity of the dance, the heartfelt dramatic urgency.
In 1991, after I had persuaded Ann Dailey (now Gantz), (my best friend from high school and college), to see Boston Ballet, and she had also been carried away by the artistry of the company, she suggested that we should join the Boston Ballet Volunteer Association in order to give something back to the organization and to the dancers who consistently moved and delighted us so thoroughly. We were immediately asked to be the chairs of a committee that organized a series of presentations about ballet by personnel from Boston Ballet's artistic staff, musicians and others, which Ann eventually dubbed "Dance Talks". We had great fun for several years doing that and then together were also chairs of the Tour Guides. We also had the great pleasure of volunteering with the costume shop where we sewed on jewels, hooks, bars, buttons and labels, and ironed or took apart costumes, or joyfully took on whatever task we were given by the wonderful staff, Amy Persky Gross, Kim Vercoe, Charles Heightchew, Ken Busbin. Since Dan's retirement he also has joined the volunteer crew. Dan and I are currently chairs of a committee that introduces new volunteers to the the responsibilities and opportunities for volunteers at Boston Ballet. We continue to sew and tour-guide and help out in the boxoffice.
Both the memory of splendid performances and the great satisfaction and pleasure that our dancers provide performance after performance is our special shared cultural nourishment.