Lacey will appear May 17 and 18 as the Fairy Godmother in the Northern California Ballet production of Cinderella.

Interview With Lacey Witten

Three days before the opening performance Nutcracker , Lacey sustained a serious injury during rehearsal.

Somewhere in the arcane history of live theater, performers quit saying good luck, believing it would cause bad luck. Instead they started saying “Break-a-Leg.” A search of the internet reveals several theories of how this started, but all have serious flaws. In short it seems no one knows. Dancers are as superstitious as any performer. They too for generations have not said, “good luck.” They also do not say break-a-leg. For a dancer that is all too real a potential. So what do dancers say? We’ll get to that. But, first let’s find out what happened to Lacey and the performance.

Interviewer: Lacey, what happened in that rehearsal?

Lacey: I was dancing English Toffee, a 43-second solo that includes many quick spins and jumps. I’ve performed this solo for over 10 years, so many times that it comes incredibly naturally to me. I was almost at the end, doing the jumps I had done a hundred times, and I felt something in my knee shift. I collapsed, unable to move my leg. In the performing art of ballet you’re taught to immediately get up if you fall, and finish the dance, but I couldn’t. The performance was halted as multiple people helped me up and offstage to somewhere I could sit. I was able to put weight on my leg, so in that moment I thought it was temporary pain, and that I’d be better by tomorrow. But the next morning when I couldn’t walk on my own, I knew I wouldn’t recover enough for opening night in 3 days.

Interviewer: I understand you are one of the principal dancers for Northern California Ballet (NCB). Your inability to dance must have put a strain on the company.

Lacey: I had nine parts in the performance, and none of them had an understudy. The entire company came together to fill the holes I left: dancers took on more roles than they already had, emergency rehearsals were held to teach dancers their new parts, and a former dancer who wasn’t even in the performance came back to help. Previously I feared that my injury would ruin the show, but in 24 hours we had figured out how to save it. And I still got to dance in the show, just hopping on one leg. 

Interviewer: So you were able to do some of the parts.

Lacey: Yes, I did the dancing bear and the Mouse Queen in Act 1. Both are more acting than dancing.

Interviewer: Who did the part you where you were injured?

Lacey: You mean English Toffee. No one. We cut that part. Although, it is in Tchaikovsky’s original score, few companies include it.

Interviewer: How long did your recovery take.

Lacey: It has been 6 months and I think it will be another 3 months before I am fully recovered.

Interviewer: So, do dancers say
break-a-leg to wish a fellow performer good luck.

Lacey: Absolutely not. The risk of it actually happening is way too great!

Interviewer: So do dancers say, “good luck.”

Lacey: No, of course not.

Interviewer: So what do you say.

Lacey: Well. We ummm, well we say merde.

Interview: You mean the french work for —-

Lacey: You got it.