'I am not the normal ballet mom.'(Elinor Neary, mother of former New York City Ballet ballerinas Patricia and Colleen)(Obituary)

Stage mother--those words conjure up a vision of Mama Rose in Gypsy, probably the archetype of maternal harridan. But stage mothers, like all other phenomena, run the gamut. At the opposite end is the fabled Mama Neary, mother of Patricia and Colleen, the former New York City Ballet soloists. Pat now travels the world for the Balanchine Trust, staging over thirty-four of the great choreographer's works, and Colleen is ballet mistress with Royal Danish Ballet. Elinor Neary, who died June 29, 1995, at the age of eighty-one, was one of a kind and made ballet mom a term of honor rather than opprobrium.

"Oh, don't ask me anything, young man; I'm just somebody's mother," remarks the quiet, bespectacled English mum who sits knitting backstage in an early scene of everybody's favorite ballet movie, The Red Shoes. Elinor Neary was never just somebody's mother. She was a ballet activist, involved in every aspect of her daughters' training and careers, dispensing help, advice, and endless warm hospitality to the ballet world at large. Anecdotes abound. Pat relates that for every performance in which she was either a soloist or a principal, Elinor sent flowers to be presented to her onstage. "She did not sign the cards `from Mother' because Mr. B or someone [else] might know that Mom had sent me flowers. They were signed from `an admirer' or `a fan.'" Later Balanchine ruled that flowers could be presented only if all of the ballerinas in a particular ballet received them. "In order for me to receive flowers, Mother sent them to the other three ballerinas as well--and after the last bow I would collect hem from the other ballerinas. Unbelievable but true."

Pat has stories of Elinor sewing extra jewels on costumes, shortening skirts to show legs to better advantage, revising makeup--she had a particular aversion to tan body paint coming off on bodices and tights--remaking costumes in better materials, and even, on occasion, altering choreography. She didn't want to be categorized with ballet mothers who weren't as knowledgeable as she was. "She took great pride in her corrections. She wrote them in classes and in all performances and continued to do so up until her death.... She would say, `I am not the normal ballet mom,' and she was right!" Elinor never missed a performance by either Pat or Colleen even though she worked every day at Macy's in the silver department or in the canteen that she ran over the course of many years for the company dancers at the New York State Theater. Balanchine had been so impressed by her cooking for the legendary parties she gave that he invited her to start this project.

Mama Neary's parties are a saga in themselves, Her large West Side apartment in Manhattan was a gathering place for companies such as New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and the Bolshoi and Stuttgart ballets. Her guest book is a treasure trove of signatures from the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Arthur Mitchell, Melissa Hayden, John Cranko, Marcia Haydde, Maris Liepa, and--George Balanchine. Nondance celebrities who also turned up included Warren Beatty, Milos Forman, and Simon Estes. The welcoming good cheer was augmented by Elinor's renowned roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, crepes with creamed-shrimp sauce, meatballs with sour cream, and widely hailed brownies. Pat says, "People still talk about these parties today, and that's twenty-five to thirty years ago. She did these parties with no help!"

Elinor Miksitz Neary was born in Miami on November 16, 1913. She studied piano, singing, and tap dancing, as well as that uniquely American art form, toe tap. By the age of eight she was performing in vaudeville. "Actually," acknowledges Pat, "tap was her true love, but she couldn't convince her two daughters that taping was better than ballet." Elinor was delighted, naturally enough, when, after seeing the old MGM movie The Unfinished Dance with Cyd Charisse, Pat expressed the wish to study ballet. "She immediately found the best ballet teacher in Florida ... a mad Russian. She watched me in every class and also [at] private lessons. It was in one of those ... lessons that she yelled, `That's enough!' as I struggled to do [a rarely performed, very flashy male step,] a triple cabriole (I could already do doubles). She yanked me out of the studio, yelling all the way to the car that all she wanted [me to be] was 'a corps de ballet dancer, not a freak.' (A star is more like it.)

"She immediately put me in Thomas Armour's school. He spoke to me recently after my mother's death. My mom knew all ballet terminology, and when she was younger--well, let's say up to age fifty-five--she could demonstrate everything.... My favorite story [about this is that] one day she watched Colleen in class at School of American Ballet (they allowed parents every once in a while). At home that day, she told Colleen her cabriole front was not correct because she brought the top leg down to the bottom [leg when] it should be the bottom leg coming up and hitting the top one. Colleen said, `Oh, what do you know?' Of course, Mom jumped up and proceeded to do a cabriole perfectly in efface front in our living room. Colleen cried, I laughed, and somehow the ceiling of the apartment beneath us held up."