Berlin Ballet – Symphony in D

If I had not gone to Ballet West, one of the options that I was looking at (if I stayed in Europe) was to try out for Netherlands Dance Theater with Jiri Kylian. That was because of so enjoying the choreography that he created when we danced his ballet, Symphony in D, in Berlin.
Shane Colquhoun and I danced the first Pas de Deux in this ballet which is supposed to be humorous on every level. Here you have very beautiful, very classical ballet music and the curtain opens, and everyone is in long shorts, suspenders, in rainbow colors, with rainbow socks. Then the music takes off at a ridiculous speed for dancing and so begins the playful humor that is in the heart of all dancers being expressed on stage.
Symphony in D is a comedic ballet.
Kylian was one of the first to really make a successful spoof ballet and show a bit of humor about the seriousness of the ballet world.
I was to play the overly bored ballerina and Shane was to play the very focused male dancer who wants to please his partner. So, while I appear to just be going through the motions of the steps, he is very intent in what he is doing and trying to get her to respond to him. Eventually, it breaks loose, and he starts having lots of fun and playing off his partner and another woman that comes on the stage.
Shane and I had such a great time playing off each other in this ballet. It was a great joy to dance with him in this role.
Humor is so important, and, in our generation, most ballets were very serious … so the audiences were also very serious.
I remember, we went on tour to Bonn, Germany and one of the performances we did, while we were there was Symphony in D. The audiences in Germany tend to be of the more serious side and with every spoof that we tried to pull off, no one laughed.
I remember John Skripek, one of the company jokesters kept egging us all on to be more and more outrageous for this (in his words) stuffy audience. We tried and tried but only got a few cackles from the audience.
At the reception afterwards, some in the members of the audience came up to the dancers and said how funny that ballet was and how much they enjoyed it.
I remember many of us saying, “You know it was okay to laugh out loud. That was the point. We were making a spoof on ballet.”
And they all replied, “Oh, I did not know it would be proper to laugh in the theater!”
The other favorite moment from this same ballet was that there was a part of the choreography that the men were supposed to come in on their knees, very fast, on a diagonal, one after the other. My dance partner, Herman Jiesamfoek, was to be the first one out and had to cross the entire stage rapidly on his knees.

During his first attempt, I will never forget his face as the pain was so severe that he just could not do it. The look on his face was something between shock (at the level of pain) and the sudden realization that such a thing was going to be impossible for him to do. A part of him was in agony as another part of him saw the insanity of the moment and started to laugh. I will never forget that look on his face as he finally gave up and went on all fours to cross the stage.
The other men were not much better.
They also were in agony. It became clear that none of them were going to be able to do that sequence. That was when they all demanded knee pads to make it even possible.
Herman did have the boniest knees and even from those small attempts, his knees were black and blue from trying it once.
Fortunately, everyone got knee pads and so the choreography was eventually … doable.
I love the range of emotions that dancers share in rehearsals. And they go from one side of the spectrum to another.
Joe Clark was another great dancer that could exhibit a double dose of humor in one moment and then he would go to the other side of anger in a flash. More than once I saw him come off stage, not pleased with himself in a sequence, and he would punch something.
While such outbursts are not the norm, they are quite impressive when they happen. All the pent-up perfectionism sometimes must go somewhere, and in a fit of frustration and upset with oneself, dramatic things can happen.
My favorite personal, “faux pas” was more of a Kung Fu move that happened in a performance of Ophelia, as I was playing Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother who remarries Hamlet’s uncle after the father’s death. She is seen as a character central to the theme of the ballet, and she is the reflection of moral ambiguity, love, and betrayal. She is a character that is not a villain but a manifestation of a flawed human being who gets caught up in a political web of circumstances that seem beyond her control as she does not understand Hamlet’s grief and anger over his father’s death that is leading him into insanity. She ends up becoming involved in a scheme to have Hamlet killed because he seems so unstable and incapable of leading.
In this brilliant ballet, (by Val Caniparoli) in another intense emotional moment, I am running, and I have to turn a sharp corner. As I am doing that turn my foot slips on the black tape keeping the pieces of the Marley floor together and I fall on my back with both feet in the air. But in an emotional expression of the moment, and with the help of my inner Kali, I literally do that Kung Fu move where I land on my back and with my feet and legs … I use the bounce to pop instantly back up on my feet.

Honestly, I do not know how I did that. It happened so fast that I was standing … just as I realized I had fallen. Some things go in slow motion. But that one was quick. It was pure instinct.
At the reception afterwards, people remarked on the amazing choreography that I did where I fell on my back and popped back on my feet. They thought that was an amazing move.
Little did they know … how amazing it was to me as well.

~Suzanne Wagner~