Remembering David McNutt

Today I remember an amazing man, David McNutt. I knew him as the wild character that sat in the front row of the theater with a black cape with red interior and a top hat. He was a man that loved the theater and especially the ballet.

All theaters are filled with those wonderfully eccentric souls that come to the show but also put on a show.
After all, why not?

The theater is a place that accepts one and all. That is why most artists are so inclusive and more accepting of the unusual traits in humanity.
As the dancers got to know David, we discovered an avid photographer that wanted to create forms of art to immortalize the beauty that he saw. He wanted to capture the moment, the feelings and the unique expressions that showed timeless beauty and to make them possibly stand the tests of time.
I have many pictures from personal photo shoots up in the mountains with my friend Mary Ann Lind and other priceless moments captured on stage, and privately with David. I treasure each and every one of them.
But David was a complicated person in very unique ways. I think it is often that eccentricity is a healing tool of those that have had terrible trauma.
While I cannot say that I knew David well, what I can say is that the bits that he shared with me were illuminating and shined a light into the journey that created the man that he had become.
He had been in Vietnam and clearly had terrible PTSD from this global event. He did not talk about the war but how he struggled afterwards, in so many ways.
He told me how he was married but could not adjust well. It was very hard on his wife because she could not sleep with him as when he fell asleep, he had a primal protective unconscious agenda if woken up. What that meant was that he would be almost sound asleep, but he would attack and pin down the person waking him up.
He told me that he knew he needed to get a divorce when his wife barely opened the door to tell him it was time to wake up for work, when then next thing he knew, he had pinned her to the ground outside the door as he finally woke up.
In that moment he realized that he had a real problem and working that problem out with another in his space was unsafe … for them.
Deep in his heart he was a good, deeply kind, and giving man. But war is clearly hell and that instinct of his that had saved his life a few times in Vietnam … was not a good way to handle things in a normal relationship or a normal world.
He recognized how deeply engrained it was and this was in the 1980’s when the tools and medications they have now were not available to these poor traumatized men and women.
In that moment, I realized that his escape from that terrible reality of war was the “Happy Ending” world of ballet. It was an escape from the horrific things in the world and a reminder that there are good things, happy endings, and after all, “everything is beautiful at the ballet.
After I retired from ballet, I spoke to him a few times because he wanted my intuitive skills as he got a job in Saudi Arabia working for the World Bank.
His team has been hired to go into the Banks in Riyadh and to upgrade them to the required rules and regulations to allow them to be part of the international banking systems.
At that time in the late 1980’s the banking systems in Saudi Arabia were horribly corrupt. There was a lot of money laundering going on and money crossing international boundaries in highly illegal ways.
He told me that while the Saudi Royal family had wanted the banks integrated into the World Bank systems, once his team got in there it was clear how much they were going to be forced to completely start over and have to reconstruct the systems from the beginning. His team had never seen such overt corruption that was influencing billions of dollars, governments, and illegal activities and criminals. And the money patterns lead only one direction … to the top.
He said that each time, he would try to gently point out the problem, all the staff would become highly agitated and say they had to speak to some other, higher individual, and eventually the King.
But then nothing would happen. Everything would stop as they were waiting for some level of approval that never came.
His team’s job was to make their systems integrate with international banks and so all their systems were interconnected. His team was not allowed to do it until everything was compliant with international banking laws.
There was a lot of back and forth, little movement, a ton of waiting, and the whole thing was a waste of time and effort.
On top of this impossible predicament, the team was housed in the area for international guests. It was a huge building of apartments in a square with a center courtyard where everyone could socialize with western clothing and more modern standards. Meaning that women did not need to wear a head covering or dress modestly. And the men were allowed to wear western clothing. In the restaurants within the compound, alcohol was served which was forbidden in the Kingdom at that time.
But he told me there was one glaring problem. One side of the compound looked out onto the square where the beheadings took place as a form of execution for prisoners convicted with a capital offense. And his apartment looked directly down on the event.

The way he explained it, this was clearly traumatizing to his gentle nature and sensibilities. Not to mention that it triggered his own issues. He believed they place his team on this side for intimidation purposes.
Shortly after one of the rounds of executions and the reactions of the crowds hungry for blood lust, he was required to once again, to deal with the head of the bank to try to get compliance with the rules and laws of the World Banking systems. By this point they had been in Saudi Arabia for about 4 months. Clearly the president of the bank was tremendously uncomfortable. David again, pressed what he needed in as kind and respectful manner as possible.
The next thing he knew, he and his team were met with armed guards, and ushered out of the country. At first the team was afraid that they were being arrested, but they were being deported.
They were told that all their belongings were being packed up and would be shipped home to them. Which they were and arrived weeks later in America. But it was clear that things had been rummaged through and certain notes were oddly missing.
He said the whole team was extremely nervous about what was going to happen to them. But they were allowed to go to the airport with only the clothes on their back and their passports and wallets.
He said that the team only relaxed once they were out of Saudi Arabian airspace.
His comment was that the layers of complex corruption was so insidiously running through their banks that he doubted that their banks would ever be accepted into the World Banking systems.
I tell you the parts of his life that I know, and I wanted to share because I felt David today, asking me to do this for him.
Perhaps it is for all of us to remember those unsung heroes that did extremely difficult jobs under dangerous circumstances and survived.
Perhaps it is to remember those from the Vietnam War that suffered so much and were terribly traumatized by war and struggled to find a normal balance.
Perhaps it is to remember that there exist many powerful people in the world with a lot of money that will do whatever they can do lie, cheat, and steal their way to keeping themselves at the top.
Or perhaps it was to remember David McNutt, a talented photographer and a great lover of the ballet.
I take my top hat off to you David, and I hope you look down fondly on all of us that cared so deeply for you. Know that you did so much for us to make us feel … special.

~Suzanne Wagner~