Garret Hogan

IDT I African Dance

20 November 2012

My Background

Memories of pain and sorrow often times come to mind in my family when asked about our heritage. Being of Russian decent, the women in my family were not treated with the respect that people would think. In fact, it was quite common for families to disown infant girls because they were only interested on raising men to carry on the family name. Having a daughter only meant that they would have to give up what they owned someday in a dowry to another family. Such was the case with my great-grandmother, Betty Veska.
Betty is not her real first name. As a child when she learned of the situation she was in, being abandoned, she decided from then on she would continue on with a different name. So Betty Veska was reborn. Unfortunately I could not get her to tell me her original birth given name, perhaps she did not even have one, or maybe no one except herself and the orphanage in which she grew up knows. At any rate the stories she shared of the orphanage and her time out of it were truly remarkable.
Growing up in an orphanage can be tough to begin with. Growing up in an orphanage in the heart of an area of what is now known as Bulgaria during the Great Depression was even worse. Many believe that the Great Depression was only affecting the United States. This was false. Though it may be true the Depression affected the U.S more than any other country that is not to say other countries were not hit hard as well. The United States was a world beacon at the time of the roaring twenties and the Depression. All countries and continents looked up to the United States and often did big money business with them, creating extremely high revenue and profit for not only the U.S. but the other country as well. Once the Depression hit, this exchange of goods and money ceased to exist. Funding for governmental programs, especially in Russia, was immediately stopped, one by one. Orphanages unfortunately were one of the first to go.
My great-grandmother once told me that one-day while growing up in the orphanage she was playing in the field that was behind the building where the orphans lived. Coincidentally, there was a very poor farm that had a couple acres of corn next to this playing field. A black family tended this farm, and stayed in the shack behind the house. More than likely this family of three (a man, wife, and child around my great-grandmother’s age) were slaves to the owner of this house. Never-the-less, one day the small boy from the family was also playing in this field with my great-grandmother. She told it had not even been 10 minutes before the Governess of the orphanage was screaming her name to immediately come back inside. She was soon after beaten for having been in contact with a person “of color,” as the governess had worded it. This was the first case of racism that my great-grandmother had ever witnessed.
Because of the low funding of the Russian orphanages, not many of them existed; this in turn made living conditions for the orphans almost unbearable. Betty told me at one point she shared her bed with five other girls. Five 14 year old girls on a single bed, could you imagine? It also did not help that the war going on was killing off most of the fathers of these children and since the mothers had no way to support themselves let alone the children, many gave them up, some even, my great-grandmother told me, had committed suicide.
For many reasons, such as the ones previously mentioned, my great-grandmother was happy not to have any connections with her family. She told me she often thought she probably would have ended up in the orphanage anyway. She said she always imagined both her parents dying in the war to save Russia, so not knowing them at all from the beginning helped her to not be so sad all of the time, like so many of the other orphans. But there was one thing that did get to her, and that was the feeling of belonging. She told me that even though the orphanage was often sad and had a dreary feeling, moments of happiness would come when some of the other children would talk about the good times they had with their parents while they were still alive. Picnics, fishing trips, going to the store together, it made my great-grandmother upset that she could not relate to their happiness. The school teachers and leaders of the orphanage were never anything more than strict disciplinarians to my great-grandmother, and she was not at all good with making friends with the other children as they though it was weird that she never had known her parents. She told me the other kids would say that Americans had dropped her off because she was not even good enough to live in their country.
That is one thing I found extremely ironic and comical. A lot of her stories had to do with the fact that she or some of the other kids would make fun of something by comparing it to America. To the orphans, who were being “brainwashed,” as my great-grandmother put it, the U.S.A. was a place full of adults who did absolutely nothing but lie all the time and promote unheard of ways of living. In any case, things finally started turning around for my great-grandmother once she turned 15 and could get a job down at the supermarket arranging the fruit and vegetables. It didn’t pay well, at all, mostly because she was a girl, but she told me she had to do something to get out of the orphanage, and to pay for her dance lessons.
My great-grandmother said she started dancing ever since she could remember, but was often not allowed because she said she was showing off which was vanity, and in the orphanage, vanity was a sin that you could not perform. But once she started getting out of the orphanage and going on walks, she noticed in building that was almost completely windows a room full of mirrors. Wondering what it could be she sat and stared for a while and that’s when 13 girls in tights stepped out to the bar and started warming up. She knew this is what she needed to do with her spare time and that’s when she went inside and talked with a secretary about what she needed to do to start classes. $15 for the whole year, and she would need to purchase her own tights. That’s when she started her job. It took her nearly nine months to save up for the money but luckily she got it just in time for the new semester to start. Her tights she was lucky enough to sew herself, a skill she had learned reluctantly from her governess.
I always admired that particular part of the story because it was my great-grandmother who had forced me to sit down with her so she could teach me how to sew. Any who, when my great-grandmother started her classes she spent al her spare time practicing in her room at night, and staying after class as well as getting there early. For five years she took classes at this ballet studio, and that’s how long it took her to get out of the orphanage. Anna Pavlovic, for those who don’t know was the head coordinator of the Russian Ballet at the time, was looking for fresh new dancers, among those she had already hired on was the famous Robert Helpmann who completely changed what was ballet then into what it is now. When Anna noticed my great-grandmother dancing in the studio after class, she was hired immediately and soon after started touring the entire country performing ballet for others. Dancing, she told me, was the greatest thing she could ever do. And not just for herself, but for others. Dancing in a performance for her was more than just for entertainment, she felt as though she healed people with her dancing. To see the beautiful movement of another person would bring happiness to people she would tell me. And happiness, as she often said, was the greatest gift you could ever give someone. I often cannot relate much to my family. Ever since I can remember I have felt out of place with them; different. But hearing the stories of my great-grandmother changed that for me. I felt a connection with her that I had never felt with anyone else. The way she had overcome all the obstacles in her life and prevailed in the end completely happy and successful was an amazing story for me that I could so well relate to. Being a homosexual and growing up in the hard conservative place in which I did, did not make life an easy venture. It also did not help that I was never one to just sit there and be quiet, when I had something to say I was going to say it. Much like my grandmother when she marched right into the ballet studio and demanded to know how to take the classes. Hopefully the courage that she undoubtedly has passed on to me will benefit me in the same way it has benefitted her in her life adventures. Though dancing, especially ballet, is not my forte, I believe that I will someday too be successful in achieving what I want in life. Now more than ever do I believe that believe that because I have heard my great-grandmother’s story.