Lift Every Voice - Oral Histories - Lauren Anderson

LA: Every year. Every year. The past twenty-four years I’ve been the Sugar Plum Fairy. But it has never, it has not been the same any year or any show, if you can imagine that. When I first started the Nutcracker, let’s see, I can do it this way. I’ve done every role in the Nutcracker, every female role, except for Clara and Clara’s mother, okay? I’ve been two male roles, the Gopack, which is the Russian dude and a soldier. Because when we were about twelve or thirteen the girls were taller than the guys so we were the soldiers. And the choreography is a lot different now. Also, I’ve been Tina Turner, Rue Paul [?] and somebody else. I can’t think of who else I’ve been. But anyway, so I mean, you know, because he had nutty nutcrackers, too.

CC: Right. So never Clara, huh?

LA: Naa. Of course, at the time that I would have been Clara was the early 70s and it was just a little different then. And you know what’s weird? I didn’t even think about it.

CC: Really?

LA: Yeah. I mean, I didn’t think about the fact that I was Black and I’d probably never be Clara, you know. Because I only had like a two or three year spread and there were other little blonde girls, you know. But I never thought about it until later. But it’s no big deal anyway.

CC: Do you remember when you kind of put it together?

LA: Oh, god. I was in the Company already. Because I hadn’t really thought of any of that crap while I was, you know, a student. That would have held me back. I thought of it when I first realized it, I was eighteen and we were doing a, I’d just gotten into the Company, I think it was the first year, my first year in the Corps, in the Corps de Ballet, we were doing a ballet called Theme and Variations by George Balanchine. Fabulous ballet. And Hoagy Thomason, I shouldn’t mention his name, but oh, well. Hoagy Thomason came down to set the ballet, on the Houston Ballet. And I wasn’t necessarily in the corps, we had people going in and out, there were like four soloist girls and eight corps girls and a principal couple. Well, other people were in other rehearsals. So, you know, some of corps girls slipped into the soloist’ spots and some of the people that were understudying slipped into those spots.

Well, he used the four apprentice girls and I was left in the back and he was, like, “well, can we get people from the school?” I was like, and I didn’t know this.
This was told to me later. And I realized that this dude is tripping because I’m a Black chick and it’s not uniform. Hum. Well, with a guy it’s not normally that big a deal because guys are lifters and it’s not, but when girls are in the corps de ballet, I guess that was a big deal. Well, with Houston Ballet it’s never been a big deal. I’ve been put wherever any other corps girl’s been. Then in soloists roles and obviously, principal because here I am. But I didn’t notice it until it was, until like the end of that rehearsal and I was like, “He would have much rather left those two spots empty, bring two students in than to have to put me in. That’s kind of crappy.”

Well, you know, karma has its way of doing its thing ever since put in that ballet since I was in the lead. So anyway, I thought that was weird, but it didn’t, it didn’t faze me, well, actually it hurt. It hurt, but it hurt for about five minutes. Because I knew that I had to be better anyway just to be where I was, but forget that, I was going to be, that just kind of made me like, okay, forget that. I’m going to be even better to where you can’t not, you can’t NOT put me in something. So that was kind of my attitude.

Disclaimer:
“Oral Narrative as History.” Students received class credit for this work, and were under the supervision of Dr. Martha Norkunas, director of “The Project in Interpreting the Texas Past.”

Every effort has been made to transcribe the audio recordings exactly. On occasion a word, or phrase, was difficult to hear and this is indicated by a question mark in brackets.

Interviewee:
Lauren Anderson

Interviewer:
Clare Croft

Date of Interview:
September 9, September 10, 2006

Place:
Wortham Theater, Houston, Texas

Recording Format:
Audio: Edirol digital recorder, Uncompressed wave file
Video:
Mini digital videotapes

Camera:
Erin Murphy

Transcriber:
Shannon Morris