We all know the story of some of the greats' stage names, Suzanne Farrell(sp?)was once Roberta Sue Flicker, or something like that. I thought it would be interesting to talk about stage names? Do YOU have one? I've been looking for one...how does Anna (pronounced onna) Louise sound? [img]confused.gif[/img]

w/ regard to past stage names, fyi, and i am aware that this was misstated in at least one book w/ regrad to suzanne farrell: her original name was robert sue ficker, that 'l' slipped in once or twice before but it does not belong.
good luck w/ choosing a good one for yourself.

rg, you did mean Roberta, not Robert, right? [img]smile.gif[/img]

Farrell's given name is famous, reminiscent of Robert Taylor's (for the benefit of our younger posters, Taylor was a movie star, genus MGM 1930s) switch from his natal moniker of Spangler Arlington Brough. Other NYCB examples I can think of are Allegra Kent, who was once Iris Cohen, and Maria Tallchief underwent a slight alteration from Maria Tall Chief, I think. In her book, Merrill Ashley notes that a name change was forced upon her since a student taken into the company just before her had changed her name to Linda Merrill, which also happened to be Ashley's given name. How thoughtful! (However, Ashley's final choice did propel her to the top of almost every alphabetical listing of cast members, so I guess there were advantages. )


It's interesting how attitudes toward stage names have altered. It used to be that ballet was identified almost entirely with Russia, so non-Russian types assumed more exotic names, Anton Dolin, for example, known privately as Pat. (Americans have other areas of , shall we say sensitivity, so Nora Kaye and Jerome Robbins underwent name alterations to appear less exotic, not more so.)


Nowadays it seems as if audiences and producers are more accepting of less than completely euphonious names, or names explicitly denoting "undesirable" ethnic antecedents. In the movie High Fidelity, an actress named Iben Hjelje made her American debut. Had Miss Hjelje been under contract to MGM in 1935, I think it's safe to say that the front office would have fixed her up with something more pronounceable.


Why change at all, unless you have to? Wouldn't Margot Fonteyn still be Fonteyn if she had kept her own name? (Hmm...Hookham and Nureyev....maybe not....)

Anyway, Anna sounds fine to me. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Nureyev and Hookham, though -- now there's a softshoe act for you [img]smile.gif[/img] The Irish Washer Woman's Jig that Fonteyn wrote was her favorite dance as a child would have come in handy.

Julie Kent danced in Washington when a teenager as Julie Cox, and Hilary Canary, a Washington Ballet dancer who danced with ABT for awhile, became Hilary Ryan.

Violette Verdy was Nelly Gueillerm.

I forgot Melissa Hayden, who used to be Mildred Herman. And of course there's Balanchine, whose name was Frenchified by Diaghilev because he thought Balanchivadze was too difficult.

um, errrrr, no doubt 'bout it, victoria proofs text far better than this robert does: YES suzanne farrell was born roberta etc. etc.
sigh.
i can see more clearly than ever now how that 'l' found its way into the spelling of ficker!

And be honest now, if your name were Tula Ellice Finklea, wouldn't you change it to Cyd Charisse? [img]wink.gif[/img]

Henry Danton was once Henry Down....

I think that Violette Verdy's name was "Guillerm", not "Gueillerm" (it's funny to see that it's almost the same as "Guillem").

Carole Arbo (former POB principal) was in fact Carole Arbonies. Emmanuel Thibault's real name is Emmanuel Conjat. Maurice Béjart was Maurice Berger (he took "Béjart" because it was the maiden name of Molière's wife). Jean Babilée was Jean Gutman (he had to change his name during WWII). Lycette Darsonval (former POB principal) was Alice Perron.

Among the "Russified" names, there's also Dame Alicia Markova (Alice Marks).

Actually, she was Alicia Marks, Estelle. But how about Belton Evers, better known as Eric Bruhn.

Not to be pedantic, but wasn't Markova Lilian Alicia Marks?

A young girl at my studio is named Grace Archer. Isn't that just an amazing future stage name? Her older sister is a wonderful dancer, maybe she'll follow in her footsteps and get to use that name of hers? We can dream!

lol- I think it would be cool if all the people at my studio had stage names!! [img]smile.gif[/img]

How do parents react when their son or daughter changed her name? I think my parents might be a little hurt.

Now, "Jhora" has something going for it - it's distinctive and musical! [img]smile.gif[/img] However, if your last name were Herpelsnonk or Thitherspurtle or such like, usually a change is in the offing. Although, come to think of it, those would definitely have distinctiveness going for them.

Jhora, what a kind question [img]smile.gif[/img] I think sometimes the stage name is suggested -- or insisted upon -- by the company or perhaps the dancer's agent. So that gets you off the hook. "But MOM, they MADE me do it" [img]smile.gif[/img]

I dont know if its courteous necesarily but pride in my heritage, but I guess being able to pass if off to your agent, or the director of the company might just be helpful.

I'm not sure if hurt feelings would be justified for parents who saddled their daughter with the moniker Tula Ellice Finklea.

It should be noted that Cyd didn't go out of her way to hurt her parents' feelings, however. Her girlhood nickname was "Sid" and Sid happened to marry a Mr. Charisse....

But Cyd had already had another name-change, because she danced in Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes (from 1939) under the name of Felia Sidorova! (She studied with Bolm). As we know, there is nothing new in this kind of name-change. One I like is John Cooper (c1575 - 1626), an English composer and viol player, who changed his name when he visited Italy; he became Giovanni Coprario, and kept the name when he returned to London. His pupils included King Charles I.

Grace Archer, Michy? Now if you'd been in England you'd know that there is (or was) a long-running radio soap-opera called "The Archers" over there and, yes, there was a character called "Grace".

Too bad I don't have a good use for my own birth name, which I think would have been a great stage name: Karen Karman. Perhaps I can still become famous (or infamous) for something.

I knew someone who was asked to join the NYCB back in the 60s. She had 3 days to decide on her stage name. Now she had already used her own name on stage, as she had been a child actress and had appeared in several Broadway productions. Her real name was Betty Jane Siegle, and I guess it was thought to be "too Jewish-sounding" at the time. She changed it to Bettijane Sills, and became known in the NYCB as "BJ" (although someone once refered to her as "the girl with the initials".)

I was thinking about this last night..hehe
Anyways, wow, I learned a whole lot just now, that is so cool. I think that I would change mine to Diana Day--I don't know why..lol!
gracieful

There's also a union constraint on use of names. If, for example, there already is a, say, "Mel Johnson" in AGMA or Actor's Equity, then the performer has to take a variant or change it entirely, even if it's his own name. A recent example was Emma Watson, of Hermione Granger fame. Film historians were astonished to find that she had acted in films as early as 1914, and in 2001 had acted the part of a twelve-year-old in Harry Potter. The first Ms. Watson, however, had, by then, passed on to the great casting call in the sky, and the name wasn't "taken" anymore! An interesting possibility would be for the young performer to take the stage name "Abishag Hooplenoodle" and then announce they had changed it TO Abishag Hooplenoodle, and have the curiosity drive ticket sales. Of course that didn't work for Klinton Spilsbury, but.... [img]wink.gif[/img]

Wasn't it what happened to Stewart Granger, whose real name was... James Stewart? (A bit the same as what happened to Linda Merrill/ Merrill Ashley...)

There are at least two actors from Hong-Kong called Tony Leung: Tony Leung Chiu Wai, and Tony Leung Ka Fai. This is all the more complicated as they have approximately the same age, and have played in several films together, and sometimes just are credited as "Tony Leung"...

I've always been a bit surprised that Belton Evers changed his name to Erik Bruhn, which I would have thought (though admittedly I'm fairly ignorant about Danish names) was roughly the equivalent of John Smith or Mark Williams in England, i.e. very ordinary. When very young (dare I admit this?) I naively looked him up in the Copenhagen phone book and found a great many Erik Bruhns!

[ February 01, 2002: Message edited by: Helena ]

I've often wondered why NYCB didn't make Patricia McBride change her name to avoid confusion with Pat - I wonder if they'd accept a Suzie Farrell or a Pete Martins these days? (What was the first PMcB like, by the way?)

WHO was the first Pat McBride??? (blush) I think I missed her!

Re Erik Bruhn, I've never researched this, but I thought Belton Evers were his middle names. The Gruen biography says "Erik Belton Evers Bruhn". If he changed it, he did it as a child, because every reference I've seen to him in Danish books is under the name Bruhn. I've had discussions with Danish dancers of that era about other dancers who changed their names, and he has never been offered as an example. I believe (again, I write from memory without checking [img]smile.gif[/img] ) that Evers was his father's name while Bruhn was his mother's; one may draw one's own conclusions from that. So there may have been a name change, not for stage reasons, when he was a child.

All these are fascinating, though. I wonder if there's a list of all the English and American dancers who had to change their names to Russian ones during the Ballets Russes era?

Alexandra,that would explain it. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet - the old one - just says "Erik Bruhn (orig. Belton Evers)", and I had just believed that.

Helena, I remember reading that, too. And it may well be correct; some people don't like a name change to be known. I have to call some people in Denmark this weekend to check a few facts, and I'll ask that one as well.

On Danish phone books, I've looked up almost every dancer there. There are so many people with similar names (there are 13 pages of H.C. Andersens!) that, as I'm sure you noticed, they also print the person's occupation so you can tell Lis Jeppesen, solodanserinde, from Lis Jeppesen, damens frisoer (women's haircutter, and the Danish is probably misspelled). Kirsten Simone is listed as "prima ballerina" and Niels Bjorn Larsen simply as "balletmaster". Everyone is listed, even if the phone number is unlisted. There will be a "secret number" where the phone number should be!

I missed Pat McBride, too, but during her time in NYCB, she was "best friends" with Tanaquil Le Clercq. She was a speaker at the NYCB memorial for Tanny last May, when her name appeared on the program as Patricia McBride Lousada, thereby confusing many people in the audience. She was among the contributors, as Pat McBride Lousada, to "Remembering Tanaquil Le Clercq" in the Summer 2001 issue of Ballet Review. That section also contains two wonderful photographs of Tanny and Pat, in fashions of the 1940s. It also contains excerpts from four letters Le Clercq wrote to McBride from Paris in 1949.

Kirsten Simone is listed as "prima ballerina"

So the next time someone askes, "what is a ballerina?" I'll refer them to the folks who make the Danish phone books. They certainly seem to know!

[ February 01, 2002: Message edited by: Manhattnik ]

I think the person gets to fill out a form with a line that says "occupation." Simone had the rank of "først solodanser" (lit. first solo dancer) so "prima ballerina" is within her rights to say, I think, even if it does look a bit odd in a Danish phone book. (What's this Italian doing here?) It's nice, though, for someone who loves ballet to be able to look up a lot of names and find "ballet dancer" or "Royal ballet dancer" next to their names.

if i remember correctly, patricia lousada is also lady lousada, and i seem to remember that she is married to the sainsbury's (grocery stores) fortune. she also writes very good cookbooks.

Well the above cleared up some things for me. I had never heard of "pat mcbride" and on Thursday I saw her listed as being in the original Firebird. We figured it couldnt have been Patricia Mcbride as she would have been a very young girl in 1949. We actually thought it must have been a male dancer from that era since neither my wife or I had heard of her. Also, we were not as close to the stage as we normally are for the May tribute to Tanny, and we thought Patricia Mcbride looked very old up there. I guess it was for a good reason..... it wasn't her! [img]smile.gif[/img]

when i first started hearing of this 'other' pat mcbride in the era of the later, patricia mcbride, those who knew both dancers used to refer to them with some consistency, calling the first NYCB mcbride 'pat' or 'Pat McBride I'
or, referring the later mcbride as either 'patricia' or 'patty' but not to the best of my knowledge 'pat'.
maybe to prevent the confusion from continuing the I and II designations would be most helpful, the way it was used in Russia, where, for example, the famous anna pavlova became known as pavlova II, and the late, famous ballerina/S.A.B. teacher was known in the imperial theaters as danilova II.
and not to mix topics too messily, it bears noting that linda merrill had to change her name to merrill ashley when she joined NYCB, because there already was a linda merrill in the company. (and if mem. serves and if ironies can multiply, i don't think this linda merrill was born w/ her name, but changed it to that when she joined NYCB, some years before linda merrill ashley joined.)

[ February 04, 2002: Message edited by: rg ]

Actually the girl who changed her name to Linda Merrill was just a bit ahead of Merrill Ashley, the real Linda Merrill and I believe did it out of some sort of spite. Merrill Ashley was very upset about it according to her book, which I can't find at the moment. I belive her name was something like Linda Rosenberg or Linda Rosenthal and was only one or two years ahead of Merrill Ashley at SAB and knew her and knew she would end up in the company as well.

The confusion between the two Patricia McBrides becomes worse when you consider that the second, famous PM liked to be called "Pat" rather than the more commonly used "Patty," and it was the mark of an insider (or wannabee) to refer to her as Pat. Lincoln Kirstein, in one of his books, refers to Tanny's friend as "the first Pat McBride."

I'm not sure about the use of I, II, III to differentiate dancers. (Incidentally, the Internet Movie Database uses roman numerals to distinguish actors and other movie people with the same name.) I remember reading an early Russian review (written for an American audience) of Nadezhda Pavlova that referred to her as Pavlova II. That struck me as coy, since the two have different first names and the legendary Pavlova was a Maryinsky, not a Bolshoi, dancer.

And what about Darcey Bussell's real name--Marnie Crittle. Wouldn't look too good up there, would it? To be fair, she comes by her stage name honestly: Darcey is her middle name, and she was adopted by her stepfather, Dr. Bussell.

I don't think Darcey Bussell sounds too wonderful either! Not what I'd choose for a stage name....