A mother passes on a legacy to her daughter.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
Two generations of one Malibu family will help to bring magic to the stage in Westside Ballet’s traditional holiday production of “The Nutcracker.” Tchaikovsky’s perennial favorite, still fresh after nearly 120 years, will offer performances at Pepperdine University’s Smothers Theatre and at Wadsworth Theater in West Los Angeles again this year, beginning Thanksgiving weekend.
In its 37th incarnation, Westside Ballet’s “Nutcracker” is the longest running stage production in Los Angeles history and showcases the talents of the school’s best dancers, many of whom go on to careers with the country’s top dance companies.
Many years ago, one of those dancers was Malibu resident Francine Kessler Lavac, who danced in several productions of “The Nutcracker” before winning scholarships to the Harkness Dance Center’s ballet school in New York and dancing with such legendary companies as the Bolshoi Ballet and New York City Ballet.
Today, Lavac teaches at Westside Ballet and is coaching a new dancer in one of her old roles, the Dewdrop Fairy in the “Waltz of the Flowers”-her teenage daughter Kira.
“Coaching my own daughter is unbelievably thrilling,” Lavac said in an interview with The Malibu Times. “You have to be careful to be supportive as well as critical. But Kira and I maintain such a close tie that there’s never that mother-daughter thing. We speak the same special language of dance.”
Lavac is fluent in that language, having started dancing at age seven. While still a teenager, she was cast in a “Disney on Parade” tour that ended up at the White House, performing for President Nixon and his family.
She danced with Ballet West in Salt Lake City before returning to Hollywood, where she danced with Mikhail Baryshnikov in a television special. That led to other TV appearances as an actress and a return to Westside Ballet School, where she serves as artistic consultant to the woman she credits for her career, founder Yvonne Mounsey.
A principal dancer for New York City Ballet under the direction of ballet legends George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, Mounsey founded Westside Ballet after a career that took her from South Africa to the Parisian stages of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo to New York. Lavac is her most important artistic asset.
“It was a total gift to work with Yvonne,” Lavac said. “We see things the same. So it’s natural to work with her on ‘The Nutcracker’ each year. We have the same sensibility.”
During a nearly 40-year span, one could find it difficult to find new inspiration for a story that is so well known, but Lavac said it always is a pleasurable new challenge, particularly to pull professional performances out of dancers who are still, technically, students.
The effort is helped by recruiting Westside alumna to perform. This year, Kate Oderkirk, who previously performed with the esteemed San Francisco Ballet company and who now dances with the Tulsa Ballet, will return for the signature role of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Lavac spends a good part of each year preparing students to perform “The Nutcracker.” This year, the pressure is a little more intense, as her daughter will dance the second lead in a demanding role that requires extraordinary stamina.
“Kira takes direction quite well,” Lavac said. “She’s also got high energy and is very expressive. She’s a good actress. But seeing her dance a role I did 30 years ago is nerve wracking.”
If Kira is nervous about being coached by her mom, she doesn’t let on.
“I think it’s great I can follow in her footsteps,” Kira said. “She can give me the scoop on the whole role.”
When asked how they work together, the younger Lavac spoke of nuances that make a good performance a great performance.
“She’ll coach me on tilting my head on a certain step or emphasizing a certain rhythm,” Kira said. “Mom’s strength as a dancer was that she worked like a horse. She never stopped until she was on top. That’s how I am. I started working on Dew Drop even before I knew I had the part.”
Kira said that there are other roles her mother danced that she would like to tackle, like Swanilda in “Coppelia.” But this will be her last “Nutcracker” for Westside Ballet.
“I graduate [from Malibu High School] this year and I’ll be going to college,” the young dancer said. “I don’t think I’ll be trying to dance professionally, but wherever I go to school, they’ll have to have a good dance program. I’ve been dancing my whole life and I’ll never give it up.”
Westside Ballet will present “The Nutcracker” at Pepperdine University’s Smothers Theatre on Nov. 28 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Nov.29 at 1:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. More information can be obtained by calling 310.828.6211 or online at www.westsideballet.com.
Performances resume at the Wadsworth Theater Dec. 12 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Dec. 13 at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. Wadsworth Theater address: 11301 Wilshire Blvd., Brentwood, CA 90073. Tickets can be purchased by calling Ticketmaster at 213.365.3500 or online at www.ticketmaster.com. All tickets are $30.