Cufflinks nearly a casualty of ballet

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/01/2015 (4145 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I will always remember this brutally cold holiday season as the Christmas of the Missing Cufflink.

It began in mid-December when my great-Auntie Ann called from Vancouver to inform me that my late beloved great-uncle Danny, who we lost back in 2010, would have wanted me to have his solid-gold monogrammed cufflinks.

I have never worn them in my life, but I became misty-eyed when my great-aunt, who is in her mid-90s and sharp as a tack, promised to march down to her safety deposit box and send me the golden cufflinks as an early Christmas gift.

They arrived just in time for my wife to proudly attach them to my one and only dress shirt, which I was required to wear as part of the “costume” for my big pre-Christmas cameo appearance in Nutcracker, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s beloved holiday classic.

I was one of about 15 non-dancing local personalities the ballet invited to trod the boards in walk-on roles, wherein we were required to stagger onstage during the Act 1 Christmas party scene, press ourselves up against the scenery like potted plants and do our best to avoid tripping the ballet dancers as they spun, twirled and pirouetted at centre stage.

What with being a noted lover of the high arts, I was able to persuade the people who run the ballet to let me physically hoist one of their ballerinas in the air during the performance. You are going to find this hard to believe, but the ballet people thought this was a brilliant idea.

Which meant I had to attend a rehearsal, wherein lovely and talented second soloist Elizabeth Lamont would gracefully soar through the air while I stood there, sweating profusely like a baseball player preparing to catch a fly ball, prepared to grab her around the waist and plop her safely back down on the dance floor.

For those of you who are not ballet experts like me, this is a lot harder to do than it sounds. When I had a few spare moments, I practised by having a fellow walk-on, my buddy Beau from 99.9 Bob FM, randomly leap into my arms. I figured if I could safely pluck Beau out of the air, a standard ballerina would be a piece of cake.

So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I arrived, sporting my new gold cufflinks, for my debut with the ballet. The first thing they did was slick my hair back in a style that suited the period in which the ballet is set, the beginning of the 20th century.

Next, I had to slip into a gigantic fur coat and a stylish bowler hat to ensure my sweat glands were working at maximum capacity. What with being the size of a kitchen appliance, it is fortunate I was not required to wear tights, because they would have exceeded their stretchiness capacity and exploded mid-scene, hurling shards of spandex into the front row.

When I finally strolled onstage accompanied by my walk-on companion, CTV weather specialist Colleen Bready, I quickly discovered staying out of the way is probably the hardest thing to do in a major ballet.

At one point, to my absolute horror, I became entangled in a knot of whirling, twirling dancers, which caused me to panic and bolt for the sidelines — which, of course, was the precise moment, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the graceful Elizabeth Lamont wafting through the air towards me.

In my mind, I was cool under pressure, casually grabbing this beautiful ballerina around the waist, executing a sensational spin, then deftly depositing her back onstage. In reality, I looked like an escaped circus bear trying to maul a fairy princess. But at least no one was injured.

Which somehow brings us back to the golden cufflinks. Before I made my dramatic exit, one of the elegant male dancers spun in my direction, came to a dramatic halt, thrust his hand out and, in an elaborate stage whisper, snickered: “Hey, Doug, does this belong to you?”

I thought he was handing me a decoration for the Christmas tree at the back of the stage, but when I looked down I was startled to see he was clutching a single golden cufflink.

“Yikes!” I said, snatching up the gift entrusted to me by my great-aunt, a wayward bit of jewelry this remarkably agile dancer had scooped off the floor where it had silently fallen, and casually returned it to me, with no one in the audience being the wiser.

Later, after I joined my wife in the audience for the second half of the show, I confessed the entire embarrassing incident.

“I’m not surprised at all,” my wife whispered, frowning.

“Why is that?” I hissed, petulantly.

“Because,” she sniffed as the curtain began to rise, “everyone knows you’re the missing link!”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca