Pirouettes and Passions Growing up behind the Curtain By Mia Nadasi
This memoir is for readers interested in ballet and theatre and
life of the privileged artists behind the ex- Iron Curtain. It
fills a gap about a period and Hungary's artistic life not much
written about in English. My parents were both ballet dancers, my
father rose to be the Artistic Director of the Hungarian State
Ballet Company. I followed their footsteps and became a dancer and
an actress. The journey of our family which starts in the 19th
century is typically European as it encompasses locations of
several countries: Germany, France, Russia, Switzerland, even South
America and of course mainly Hungary. The history of their families
could not have been more different. My father was an illegitimate
child and had to overcome a poverty-stricken childhood to become a
much awarded leading artist of his day, regarded today as one of
the founding father of classical ballet in Hungary. He personally
encountered great names in the ballet world; took classes with
Cecchetti, where his fellow dancers included Nijinsky and Karsavina
and watched Fokine creating his ballets. My mother hailed from a
wealthy bourgeois family of French/German extraction yet the two of
them ended up dancing together all over Europe before settling in
Hungary. Having established their ballet studio in Budapest they
became well-known and successful members of the glittering pre-war
Budapest society. I was born during the war and after the communist
take-over life has changed fundamentally. Initially my parents were
regarded as capitalists, but soon their expertise was recognised
and like so many other artists, they became privileged within
theconstraints of the regime. From an early age I was groomed to
become an artist. I describe my years as a ballet student in the
State Ballet Institute, based on the system of the Russian school.
As a child I started acting at one of the most distinguished
theatre companies (Vigszinhaz) and later I joined as the youngest
ever member. At the same time I made my debut in a successful film,
as a result I became one of the well-known faces in the country.
When I graduated from the State Ballet Institute my partner was
Ivan Nagy. However, I turned my back on ballet and decided to
become an actress. In the nineteen-fifties and sixties I got to
know the most important 'players' in the ballet, theatre and film
world. During that period I grew up and matured both as a performer
and a young woman. My sentimental education, crushes, romances and
heartbreaks were all informed by that milieu. I was a schoolgirl
during the 1956 uprising and experienced the so-called soft
dictatorship that followed. However, my perspective is always
personal; the great historical events only feature as much as they
touched my life. There is more emphasis on everyday life and the
small human dramas that shaped my fate and those of my friends. It
was also fate that made me to give up my homeland and take a flight
to England.
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