The Oscars turned eighty this past week and so did Georgette Tsiguirides. (above)

Georgette is an incredible woman who was chosen by John Cranko to assist him and notate while he was creating his masterpieces. She has given close to sixty years of her life to the Staatstheater Stuttgart (she was here at the Opera Ballet before Cranko had his breakthrough in the sixties even…) and she is still in the studio with us every day being deliciously bossy. We marvel at her showing the steps pretty close to ‘full-out’ and any male dancer who has worked with her in any of the world’s big ballet companies can attest to her love of being lifted. (It must be said; she is around five feet..give or take an inch and is a perfect candidate for such aerial activities!) Georgette likes to pay particular attention to detail and nuance in the choreography which brings us closer to re-creating the flow of movement that Cranko intended in his work.

I, myself, am indebted to Georgette so when the time came to celebrate her many years, I jumped on it! Along with two other Georgette enthusiasts, Stefan Stewart and Marijn Rademaker, I started to think about how to properly pay tribute to this awesome lady. The timing was hardly accomodating as we only had two days before boarding the plane to Hong Kong for Swan Lake and two days after returning to organize the event. In the end, however, we pulled a last-minute soiree together with various stars giving hommage through numbers or speeches and close to 150 people in attendance. I made a ’short’ film (ended up being 50 minutes…) where a Georgette-double/crank-yanker-style puppet finds that she’s missing a step from her notes and embarks on a quest through the theater…running into Cranko’s characters (from Onegin to Juliet) in various highlights from their respective stories…(all in drag of course…). Stefan Stewart created a big-bang Broadway-like finale with most of the company doing jazzified- versions of some of Cranko’s most signature steps and Marijn Rademaker stage-managed everything from beginning to end. I was a bit of a tyrant in planning the whole thing with friends and colleagues who really just needed sleep after a 13-hour flight back from China but I’m glad that I was (and I think they were too..) just to see the look on Georgette’s face during the whole thing. I remember Marcia Haydee once saying that if you put good energy out into the world, then it invariably finds it’s way back to you. Well, Georgette Tsinguirides is brimming with the stuff so if we were able to give even a tenth of it back to her as a company then I am satisfied.

Happy 80 Georgette!
(Photo: Gundel Killian)

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Note: Georgette was one of the earliest candidates to become a ‘Fellow of The Institute of Choreology’

The FI Chor. is the highest award given by the Royal Academy of Dance (incorporating The Benesh Institute) in recognition of outstanding and exceptional service rendered over a substantial period of time to The Benesh Institute and Benesh Movement Notation.