Friday, Dec. 14, 2001 | 9:08 a.m.
Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at [email protected] or 259-4082.
A new book by the father of the Nevada Dance Theatre isn't really about Las Vegas and ballet.
Vassili Sulich's "Vision in the Desert" does, of course, describe the creation of the dance company he created in the town where he has spent nearly 40 years of his life. But that comes later -- much later -- in this book that takes readers on an odyssey of a youngster's struggles to make sense of the pre- and post-World War II era that shaped his life.
It offers snapshots of a working-class family living on a tiny, little-known island in the Adriatic Sea that for much of Sulich's childhood was occupied by strangers wearing uniforms and guns.
"Toward the end of day, the Italian soldiers would be fed. We children ran around our school and tried to reach the window screaming 'Io ti lavo la gaveta,' which in broken Italian meant, 'I will wash your mess kit.' They would leave a little bit of their food," the book says.
"After we ate it, we would wash their mess kits and return them. We were always hungry."
Not exactly the image one would have after meeting this polished pioneer of Nevada dance, who has a penchant for fine art and Italian loafers.
"A lot of people in Las Vegas think I came here, did 'Folies Bergere' for nine years and started the Nevada Dance Theatre," Sulich said. "But I had a whole life before that."
Sulich was born in 1929 on the Yugoslavian island of Brac during "the coldest winter people could remember."
His father lay fighting pneumonia while his mother endured labor. They named him "Veseljo," which means "Joyful." The chapters that follow are a chronology of a young boy's life marching in step with a world war.
"I really enjoyed writing about the early years," Sulich said in an interview this week.
Sulich developed a love of folk dance while living in a refugee camp and was 17 before he took his first ballet lesson in Zagreb, Croatia.
In another era he may not have had the chance to dance professionally so late in life. But young men were scarce. War had left so many maimed, soulless or dead. Still, Sulich says, they were some of the best years of his life.
"It was a very gray and down time," Sulich said. "We were a working-class people. What little we had was destroyed. But by 1947 or '48 we knew things were going to change for the better. And the kinds of feelings I had then, I will never have again."
The book's last chapters describe Sulich's push for a classical ballet company in Las Vegas and the conflicts that led to his resignation as its artistic director in 1997 after 25 years of service. The words are not so much bitter as they are a testament to the disappointment Sulich felt when the company changed its direction and its name to Nevada Ballet Theatre.
Sulich will sign copies of his book at the Las Vegas Philharmonic concerts at 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday in Artemus Ham Hall, on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, campus.
As for future projects, Sulich says another book is not among them -- at least not that he knows of.
"Dancing, painting, writing -- all of these things I did from my heart," Sulich said. "What am I going to do next? Who knows?"
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