VASSILI SULICH: DANCER IN A SEA OF FEATHERS

By Viola Hegyi Swisher

AFTER DARK August 1968

Las Vegas

Sometimes Vassili Sulich feels he's drowning n a sea feathers. Or up to his eyeballs in the unrelenting glitter of rhinestones and sequins that spangle Las Vegas.

But such non-psychedelia fantasies aren't out-of-sync for a man who owns three forks (one of them bent) and three hundred records (most of them “serious" music).

They're about what you'd expect from a native of Pucisce (pronounced Poo-chees-che - more or less), a little village on the island of Brac (152 sq. mi., pop. 1,707), one of the Dalmatian islands in the Adriatic Sea off the southeast coast of Croatia.

What else from a cat who choreographed Jean Cocteau's "Oedipus Rex" in Lyons, France, but who for the past three and a half years has been doing a nude adagio act in the “Folies Bergere" at the Tropicana Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip? What else?

"Thank God the desire for quality is beginning to ferment in Las Vegas now!" Vassili Sulich managed to combine the optimistic credulity of a future American citizen with only the merest touch of Balkan cynicism. "They can't see just anything any more. Though of course," he conceded quickly, "in Vegas as elsewhere there are different categories of entertainment. I'm lucky to be at the Tropicana with the "Folies Bergere." Its elaborate production has very definite artistic standards.

"When I do my nude adagio in the show I want to give it as much quality and finesse as if it were a classical "pas de deux" at the Paris Opera. And when I dance other leading male roles in the "Folies Bergere" I try to do them with as much freshness and imagination and style as possible."

Not all the undulating plumage and bejeweled sparkle of Vegas can lull Vassili Sulich into fat-cat contentment. He simply isn't one to be beguiled by the tasty "hors d'oeuvres" of showbiz. Not while an old raging hunger for art pure art continues to gnaw at his vitals.

To help appease that hunger he conducts very small but very intense classes in ballet, with most of his students drawn from shows on the Strip. Classes take place on the Tropicana stage provided and especially equipped for him with "barres" and mirrors-by the understanding and generous management.

He paints too. With ball Point and vari-colored felt pens, he paints calligraphic pictures of high-hued flowers that ought to be arrested for rioting. Now-and then-however, he'll do a still life, using an ultra simple, elegant arrangement. And of course he does people paintings, and pictures of glinting-eyed animals lurking like dreamsize predators among the flowers. Twice, the Tropicana has given him a salon for one-man shows of these paintings.

And he writes poems - bittersweet, caustic, yet compassionate. There's one called "For A Dance Teacher." It opens with a telegram from ex-student to teacher:."Big success tonight. Your pupil Geraldine." Then a metered verbal sketch swiftly etches the te ' acher's studio:". . .mirrors . . . full of smiles and sunshine, clouds and tears," Another sunshine and other tears are reflected in the teacher's eyes as he reads again the shallow,

dutiful, cruelly terse and casual message: "Big success tonight. Your pupil Geraldine."

Constantly, Sulich adds new records to the- hundreds he, already has and continues to play over and over again. There, in Las Vegas, where he hears so much jazz, he takes refuge in Wagner, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Barber, Bartok. He listen's, not only for pleasure but also in the hope of coming upon a new ballet.

Though the music I listen to, the poems I write, the paintings I do, are always involved with movement, they're not wholly my thing," said Sulich. "Just parts of the big dream. But how long can a vision exist without either fading or else being realized?

"I use choreography to externalize my feelings because I love bodies. I'm not Karl Marx or Maxim Gorki or Martha Graham. I have no complicated philosophical messages to give. No symbolic codes to convey - or cover up - my meaning. I just love bodies, and so I use them to express emotions, outlooks, ideas that are my own yet shared by all of us in our common humanity.

"Last year, on the guest faculty of the Boston Dance Teachers Club, I choreographed for the convention an unpretentious romantic "pas de deux." Because I had put all my heart into that dance, the people in our professional audience were deeply touched. Some actually shed tears as my partner and I interpreted basic emotions they discovered to be, or recognized as, "their" own innermost feelings too."

Early this month, Sulich joins the guest faculty of the Dance Masters of America for its annual convention in New York City. This time, however, he plans no assault on his colleagues' tear ducts.

If Sulich isn't the archetypal Las Vegas entertainer, "he is at least an exemplary model for a success story American style.

Back in Pucisce, his father was a stonecutter and his mother - "She was mother"" he explained in what he considered ample detail. Then he added by way of lagniappe, "- and she was wife."

On his native island, Vassili had two older brothers, two older sisters and plenty of playmates, none of whom quite shared his consuming passion for the

performing arts as practiced down Pucisce way. He loved whatever theatre he could find on Brac, even though there was no electricity to cast a glow of glamour over the players and their plays, no spotlight to focus on the circus specialties that left a slight, olive-eyed little boy pale with excitement.

At six or seven he started creating his own shows, putting on his own plays, walking the not-very . high wire, and doing mighty. acrobatics that only the most unimaginative 'spectator would dare to call elementary.

"I did dramatic works in our barn," he reminisced, "staging, directing and, of course, starring in them. For one of these spectacle dramas, I had a whole cast of kids in the hayloft, playing angels wearing crepe paper wings. Unfortunately, there were too many angels in the loft and the whole thing collapsed. Down crashed all the winged angels. You never heard such outraged bleating and baaing as the kids rolled and screamed among our barnyard animals.

"Years later, in 1957, 1 compiained one night to French dance director Irene Lidova about the wig I had been given to wear as Louis XIV in a ballet. 'You’ll she exclaimed, scolding and laughing at the same time, 'You, who come from Pucisce - playing Louis XIV! - for Prince Rainier and Princess Grace and now you complain about a wig!"'

Like any regular red-blooded kid from Pucisce or Humptulips, Washington (Zip Code 98552), Vassili ran away from home when he was a sprout. Only he didn't exactly run. He walked. With a little girl. They'd headed out to audition- before a man who had exchanged guerilla fighting for dramatics. But after making their way through several villages beyond Pucisce, they suddenly found themselves face-to-face with one of Vassili's brothers. "What're you doing here?" he demanded in elder brother tones. "Does Mother know where you are?" Vassili admitted that Mother had not been informed of the impending audition. A typical sibling discussion ensued and some fifteen high-decibel seconds passed before Vassili turned around to trudge back to Pucisce, his little girl friend in tow.

Not long after this abortive affair, Vassili went as a World War 11 refugee to Egypt with his parents. Almost immediately he became involved in a childrens theatre and puppet show, performing for American soldiers in Cairo. Next, he began playing principal roles in operetta. But his singing career was short lived. His voice started to change and the nervous management never knew if he would, give a soprano or baritone performance.

With the childrens theatre of refugees, Vassili made his way back to the Balkans where the group performed for such notables as Yugoslavia's Tito and Czechoslovakia's Benesh. Finally young Sulich formed his own folk group, and at a festival of amateur dance competitions in Zagreb he performed before Ana Roje, prima ballerina of the Zagreb Opera, and her husband. Mr. Roje, who now teaches in, Boston, invited him to join a beginners ballet at the Zagreb Opera House.

Came the second day of his leap from village "Kolo" to citified ballet and he was already onstage in "Aida." It was a memorable occasion for Vassili. He fell down. But he studied hard, improved with every sweat-beaded “grand jete" and soon was put into the dance repertoire. By and by he began to get solo roles and, after three years he became a principal dancer, appearing in such parts as the Favorite Slave in "Scheherazade" and Benvolio in "Romeo and Juliet"

One day Juana, a relative of the ethnic dance authority La Meri, came to Croatia to perform. She saw Vassili dance., told him he was very talented but had "no school." To put it bluntly, his training was out of a technical grab bag instead of a well ordered curriculum.

By dint of some plain and fancy Balkan maneuvering as natural to him as a baby-breathing, Sulich got himself to England, became a student of Audrey de Vos, received a scholarship for further dance studies from Mme. Nadine Legat in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

Not being a type who can live by art alone, Vassill auditioned and got a job in an American company of "Guys and Dolls,"' playing at the time in England. That same day, with splendid forethought, he whisked across the Channel to audition for Jeanine Charrat in Paris, and that same night he was dancing in her company.

Again, he pursued his passionate study of dance, this time with Boris Kniaseff in, Geneva and Lausanne. “Kniaseff had a fantastic honesty," says Sulich. "Never would he violate his artistic standards, never would he make any concessions for the sake of money or fame."

In Kniaseff's studio one day French composer Maurice Thiriet saw Vassili dance a composition of his own. Said Thiriet: "I'd like you to create something to my music'some day." Less than ten years later, at the Lyons Opera House, Sulich choreographed Cocteau's

"Oedipus Rex" to Thiriet's score. This Sulich followed immediately with "The Wall" (Bartok), and several operas, including "Faust,". "Idomeneo" and "Samson and Delilah," for which he also staged the dances at the Geneva Opera House and Buenos Aires Teatro Colon. Besides appearing with the Charrat company during the years that Paris was his home, Sulich also danced with the Milorad Miskovich-Irene Lidova company and was principal dancer of the Paris Lido show.

But all the time his thoughts turned increasingly toward America, where he had an uncle - and where his dreams for the future lay. He made it to these shores in 1964 and took a job with the New York company of the "Folies Bergere" so he could study with Martha Graham. After returning to Europe for more choreography, he came back to the U.S., joining the Vegas "Folies Bergere." For six months. He thought. And there he still is, doing better .than ever.

Between shows, in collaboration with lensman Zoran Veljkovic, he's working on a photo-book titled "Pavanne For A Showgirl." And of course he listens to his records, and he paints and he writes poems.

But still, waking or sleeping, day or night, he keeps dreaming he's drowning in a sea of feathers....

Top: In Paris, for Eurovision TV, Sulich appeared with Geraldine Chaplin in a film called "Geraldine." They are shown about to partake of a macrobiotic luncheon. (Photo by Claude Poirier)

Sulich paints, too. With ball point and varicolored felt pens, he paints calligraphic pictures of high-hued flowers. Twice, the Tropicana has given him a salon for one-man shows. (Photo by Michael Nagro)

Opposite page: Sulich with Liliane Montevecchi in the Folies' famous "Tango." (Photo by Chet Kranz)