Columnist Susan Snyder: This ballet is missing first act

Friday, Dec. 22, 2000 | 9:38 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Something about the Nevada Ballet Theatre's current performance of "The Nutcracker," running through Tuesday at UNLV, seems rather un-Christmas-like.

It has nothing to do with the dancers or the execution of the actual performance itself, but with the printed program that ballet patrons receive as they enter the Judy Bayley Theatre.

The program omits from its company and history pages any mention of the ballet's founder, Vassili Sulich. Sulich started the ballet from zero in 1972 and saw it through its first 25 years before resigning in 1997. He is understandably disturbed.

He recently returned to his Las Vegas home from Brazil, where he staged two ballets. A colleague and former member of the ballet's board of directors showed him a copy of "The Nutcracker" program. Sulich was surprised to find his name nowhere in it.

"This hurts me terribly," Sulich said. "I don't think I deserve this."

Bruce Steivel, the artistic director who replaced Sulich, said Thursday he hadn't read the program word-for-word. He assumed Sulich's name appeared as founder and artistic director emeritus on the company page and history page, as Sulich was promised it would.

"It was not intended in any fashion," Steivel said. "It must have been an oversight."

An oversight, he says, by a new marketing director who made an honest mistake. The marketing director was at home in bed with a fever Thursday and could not be reached for further comment, ballet officials said.

Sulich resigned his post as artistic director for the Nevada Dance Theatre amid a disagreement over moving the ballet's offices to Summerlin. He feared much of the local community would feel disenfranchised.

In a March 16, 1998, letter to the ballet's board of directors, Steivel said that Sulich would be listed on the cover page of each playbill as "Founder/Artistic Director Emeritus" and that, "Of course, he will be included in our history whenever and wherever that appears."

For "The Nutcracker" the history appears on a single page and reads: "Nevada Ballet Theatre began in 1972 as a 'vision in the desert.' " The second sentence skips the next 25 years and goes directly to Steivel's hiring in 1997.

It doesn't say the company was founded under another name by a man who drew his first cast of dancers from Vegas Strip shows.

"I was hurt," Sulich said. "It was like somebody slapped me in the face."

Kylie Johnson, the ballet's development director, says the staff is new and the mistake was just that -- an honest mistake. She said they have changed the playbill for the February performance of "Giselle" to include Sulich's name where promised.

"He has not been forgotten," Steivel added.

It may seem petty to point out such a mistake. But "The Nutcracker" is often the only ballet some people ever see, and many Las Vegas Valley residents are newcomers. They need to know who started what and why.

We don't have that much history, art or culture. We should strive to protect every bit we do have. The names of those who built this valley should never fall off the map.

We can move forward with respect.