Ballet Bloopers – Ballet West – Nutcracker – Waltz of the Flowers Pas de Deux

 

There are moments on stage that are so humbling that all one can do it is accept one’s fate.

 

While ballet is designed to look effortless, it is obviously not.

In the Waltz of the Flowers Pas de Deux, with Ballet West, I had an stunning and embarrassing ending to that ballet that no one ever wants to experience.

This particular dance is especially hard at the very end, because of a lift that works perfectly to the ending crescendo of the music in this part of Tchaikovsky.
The lift I am speaking of appears as the woman runs and leaps into the air, while the man grabs her hips from the front and lifts her over his head, as she floats effortlessly (like a flying bird) above him.

She seems to be suspended in time and space in the air. He then bends his knees and arms slightly to flip her around in a full circle clockwise. As she is falling, he grabs her left leg and her waist and then bends his left leg to support the weight of her falling body and extends his right leg for support. She ends in a position where her legs are higher than her head. So it appears to be “death defying” and her right back leg bends and supports some of the weight on his back and extends her left leg in a beautiful line and view from the front while opening her arms out to the side after the spin with them close to her body, and around her chest.
The end of the music goes, (singing the last notes), and ends on que in the final position.

The music ends with this death-defying move and there is a moment when the audience wonders if the ballerina is going to smash her head into the floor. This lift is one of trust and takes expertise. The ballerina seems suspended just before she hits the floor.
The music is beautiful, and the moment is special. The music of Tchaikovsky was specially designed for dancers, and his music is wonderful in how he allows the music to show off the best of a dancer’s precision with the culmination of a powerful ending that (almost always) is picture perfect.
……… when it works right ……….

It is amazing how in life you can do a lift over and over and never fall in the studio during any rehearsal.
But suddenly in a performance, everything that can go wrong … suddenly will.

This particular night the fates decided to cut one of our strings.

I was dancing with the highly competent, Bob Arbogast, known for his boyish charm and smile. In this Pas de Deux … we really never had any problem with this dance, that lift, or the ending.
But in a performance … things can get slightly skewed. Lightening is different and small things can be just enough that we suddenly do things we normally do not do.

In this case, I am up in the air over Bob’s head floating like a bird. As I feel Bob bend his knees and arms to pop me more up into the air so I can spin. I detect a very subtle difference in the motion. His left arm pushes more than usual. Instantly, I know that I am going to be pushed away from him rather than directly under him.

As I am spinning in the air, I know I am going to fall. I am heading towards the orchestra pit and the end of the stage. That in turn was going to cause Bob to be reaching forward to grab me and I am not a small, tiny, girl that weighs only a hundred pounds!

Catching me in front of his own body weight to counterbalance me … is not going to work.

As I was afraid that I was going to fall into the pit, I also decided to try to put my right leg down to brace myself rather than pull it up behind.

But in a heroic move to save the end position and this lift, he scooped my right leg out from under me and instead I slammed my right knee into the wood floor, he grabs me around the waist, but his weight is too far forward.
It ends with me slamming my head into the floor, and Bob, falling on top of me just as the final notes of music end.

The audience sharply inhales and gasps.

My head flatly, says silently, “Oh … I guess they saw that!”

We untangle ourselves and we try to get up as gracefully as we can, bow, and leave the stage.

While I was falling, I remember, looking at the conductor that night, Ardean Watts.

I can still see his look of horror as I am falling as his baton is up and I can see that he is afraid I am going to fall into the pit also.
As I bow, I smile timidly at Ardean, and you can tell that he is looking at my leg and head.

It is not until I am off stage that I realize that my knee is bleeding through my tights and my head is also bleeding from a scratch near my hairline.

Considering that I hit that hard I considered myself lucky. But I had a hell of a bruise on my knee for weeks afterwards.
But once again, the ballet is not over and I have no time to get out of that tutu to change tights so I try to stop the bleeding as best as I can and finish the coda and the ballet.

As I am backstage afterwards with Bob, he is despondent. He does not drop ballerinas. He is devastated. I am trying to console him after the show and trying to make a joke out of it.

I say to him, “Bob, look at it like this, We made the worst mistake possible on a stage. Now that will never happen again. Lightening does not strike twice in the same place. We may make a hundred more mistakes but that one … we are going to be on high alert for that one!”

He tries to smile but is not really buying my argument.

I notice Ardean watching me over by the front of the stage.

I go down the stairs to the dressing room and as I go down the hallway, there are corps dancers laughing and making comments that are less than nice about me falling.

I hear, “Did you see that! So embarrassing! She went splat in a Performance!”

I walk past them as they stop talking when they see me and slightly giggle.

I go to my dressing room, and I sit down exhausted and take a look on how bad things are. I am out of my tutu and have my robe on and my tights off, looking at my knee and my head, which are both bruising and discoloring as I observe them.

I make a note that they are both shortly going to be a very dark shade of purple.
Never a good sign.

When I hear a knock on my dressing room door.

I open the door to see Ardean Watts (the conductor) standing there with a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

He smiles broadly and says, “I thought a bit of champagne might be in order.”

I laugh and say, “Is that for my head, or my knee?
He laughs and says, “I thought it might work better from the inside rather than the outside!”

And we both laugh.

I invite him in, and he pops the cork in a celebratory fashion and says, “A toast!”

I look at him with a slight wry confusion. “Exactly why are we celebrating?”

He says, looking at me seriously! “I have watched every principal or soloist dancer fall from that lift at one time or another in a performance. But my toast is to you because I have never seen a ballerina deal more graciously with their partner after a fall from that lift more than you! Most ballerinas are so focused on the fact they got dropped and that they felt it made them look bad, that they do not console their partner. They lambast him instead. He is already feeling horrible, and they make it about them. And the male has to just take it.
So, thank you for being so kind and making a joke and trying to console your partner rather than beat him up more than he already was!”

Then he lifts a glass to me. I toast back and say, “Thank you!”
I will love Ardean forever, for that one special moment. He was a kind and gentle man. He was older and wiser than myself. And he understood the sacrifices that it takes to make great art.

Ballet and all artists literally leave their own blood on the stages of their life. Our sweat goes into the floors and the walls hold our most cherished dreams. I am sure some of us will linger in the audiences floating above … relishing the next generations of artists that strive to be better and I hope that they remember that many came before them with the same dreams and the same hopes and desires. I hope they can feel the stones that we have laid and that it gives them more courage to have faith in themselves to reach further, leap higher, and spin faster.
While competition exists as we are dancers, when we are older and beyond the trappings of ego and the striving for perfection, we are every dancer’s advocate. We want them to win. We want them to succeed.
Even dead …we will give them our faith and belief that they can do it better than us.
The foundation of a theater is actually the dreams of the artists that came before.
The blood of the theater is the passion that still lingers and hovers on the stage because of every generation before them.
The heartbeat of the theater is the pounding of the many feet that have walked, danced, and wandered through the various landscapes and performances.

No performer is without the energies of other performers … there … wanting to help and give inspiration and support.
All artists are family. All artists know what drives a soul to strive for an impossible perfection.

I am grateful to all those that have helped me along the way and gave me those special moments that will be remembered forever.
And even dead, I plan to come when called or when I am attracted to the fervent desires of someone who needs a bit of wisdom that I might carry.

Theaters are portals that moves through many times and places. They are sacred and wonderfully magical spots.

I hope you go and can feel the excitement and wonder that is there if one is willing to be open and to notice the magic that still exists … because a theater is a living, breathing, thing.

~Suzanne Wagner~