Local star returns home with Munich ballet

New Zealanders are about to get their first glimpse of a local dancer who has taken the European ballet world by storm. BERNADETTE RAE reports.

Hundreds and thousands of girls dream the ballerina dream. For a few, such as Lisa-Maree Cullum, New Zealand-born principal dancer of the Bayerisches Staatsballet in Munich, the physique, the talent, the teaching, commitment, timing and determination have combined to make that dream came true.

At just 29, Cullum has already danced a decade of principal roles on the most prestigious stages of Europe. New Zealanders are now getting a chance to see her in the Air New Zealand Gala Evening of Stars, with the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

She exhibited that star quality almost from the moment she took her first ballet steps as a self-motivated 3-year-old in her mother's school in Papua New Guinea, where the family moved when she was one.

By the time Cullum was 9 and back in Tauranga, she was starting to shine under the tutelage of local teacher Carol Spiers.

"I always did well in exams," she says, of her honours passes in pre-elementary, elementary and intermediate grades, when still barely into her teens.

She was not quite 14 in 1986 when she attended the Napier Summer School and won a three-week scholarship to visit the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne. At the same time she was offered a place at a new dance academy in Sydney.

She took the place, intending to complete her education by correspondence. But the education department queried her application for dispensation from school and the lessons failed to materialise.

She did the three weeks in Melbourne, but didn't feel comfortable there, despite acknowledging that it was, and is, a great school.

The Sydney school then organised a visit to Europe for its senior students, and Cullum was included. As part of their trip they participated in two major competitions.

At just 15, Cullum won a gold medal in the Adeleine Genee competition in London and was promptly offered a first-year contract with the English National Ballet by then artistic director Peter Schaufuss. She was also awarded a significant scholarship in the European Prix de Lausanne.

Cullum took it all in her stride and calmly decided she was not quite ready for the place in the English National Ballet. She accepted the scholarship instead, and set off to Monte Carlo, to live and study under the "phenomenal teacher Marika Besebrasova, now 84 and still going strong".

"I think my mum prepared me really well," she says, of her precocious independence. "I have always been strong willed, and I have always known what I wanted to do. Mum supported me in all my dreams but was never a pushy 'ballet mum'.

"She let me decide. That encouraged me to be independent.

"But I did miss my family. Sometimes it was ... horrendous."

She spent 18 months in the prestigious boarding school and graduated two years younger than her peers, fluent in French and with the highest marks.

At the English National Ballet Schaufuss still had her contract waiting.

The years in Europe, immersed in the ballet world, shine like a fine patina over Cullum's slight person. Her accent has been refined by the French and German she now speaks more often than English.

Ask her what marked her out from the other young hopefuls in the dream-crunching international dance world, and she talks of luck.

"Things just fell in my lap," she insists. "First I was lucky to be well-built for ballet. Physically I am capable of doing everything. And I have a very strong body, I don't get injured easily.

"I have also always had a natural musicality - which is about being able to hold a rhythm, to play with the music and still be rhythmically correct. Classical ballet gives you the chance to play with that a lot. But I also just seemed to be in the right place at the right time."

Fiance Vincent Loermans, also a dancer with Bayerisches Staatsballet, who is accompanying Cullum and her dance partner, Oliver Wehe, on this trip, is more forthcoming.

"She is incredibly musical," he says, "but she also has incredible technique. Her confidence in her technique gives her a lot of freedom too. She knows she can do anything at all. And she does it all. I know I am probably biased, but the critics say these things, too. In Munich they say she not only has flawless technique but the artistic warmth in her performances to go with it."

After just one season with the English National Ballet Cullum was on the move again. "Peter Schaufuss got fired," she says. "He took 11 dancers with him to his next job with Deutsch Opera in Berlin."

Cullum was one of them.

When a director likes you, she says, you have to take advantage of that in the fiercely competitive dance world.

In her first year with Deutsch Opera, at barely 19, she danced the title role in the world premiere of Schaufuss' Giselle, which is a highlight in a career of bright moments.

She was given a principal's contract in her first year at the opera. Schaufuss moved on, but Cullum remained with the company for a further eight years.

Loermans still splutters with incredulous delight at the next part of Cullum's story. "She rang up Bayerisches Staatsballet for a job - and got it over the telephone," he says. "No audition, no interview, nothing." In the past season she performed Manon and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, a long-held ambition.

Performing at "home" is the realisation of another dream "I am a bit nervous about it, which is unusual for me. But my family and people I know will be in the audience.

"I find that a bit daunting."

* Lisa-Maree Cullum with Oliver Wehe and Estonian stars of the English National Ballet Thomas Edur and Agnes Oakes dance in the Air New Zealand Gala Evening of Stars at the Aotea Centre, on Thursday & Friday.