Blog – Berlin in the Winter of 1978-1979

Berlin in 1978 was dark, dreary, foreboding, and seemed slightly dangerous.

The impacts of two World Wars had left many marks not just on the foundation stones of the buildings … but on the people as well.
These people had to weather World Wars, the Cold War, and the Berlin Blockade. The wall was up, and the heavy feeling … was of a divided country … controlled by the Allied Forces who had split West Berlin into three pieces among them. Russia got East Berlin and formed East Germany, along with the eastern countries that bordered their territories.

When I got to Berlin, it was a huge learning curve. Shops were not open all the time as in America. I had to use the U-Bahn (the subway system) which was remarkably clean, but it stopped at 10 pm back then. Laundry needed to be done by hand and hung up to dry in my room.

Food was very different, and all my old comfort foods were not available.

Everyone in the ballet company seemed to be from another country and spoke another language. The ballet company at that time was a real mixture of styles and customs.

It was mentally overwhelming to listen to at least 3 or 4 languages in a rehearsal. It was hard on my brain that was trying to learn just German.

It did help tremendously that most spoke “some” English.

Schools in Germany were much more language conscious than in America. All the European countries are that way out of necessity.
Even the English speakers were entertaining as they were from South Africa, Suriname, Australia, Great Britain, Denmark, and Holland. And even though some of those were not native speakers of English, they spoke really well but with these adorable accents.
It was very endearing to listen to them, as certain words lilted and other common words, that we used in America … they did not use in Australia or South Africa.
It was endlessly entertaining.

During that time, I am sure the director of the ballet was just trying to figure out what to do with me and where to put me.
I was new and he did not know my performing capacity. The teachers were mostly Russian, or from the East Block. There was a German ballet mistress named Gudrun Leben, who was older but still colored her hair flaming red. And she was a tough taskmaster!
Behind her back we called her, “The Commandant”.
And for the first year and a half … she seemed determined to break me and shape me into the image that she desired.

Until that moment in time, most of my ballet teachers … while tough and demanding were not mean-spirited.

I did work with Arthur Mitchell for a season … when I was 16 years old, and I did not understand why he kept hitting me. He was hitting my arms, legs, back and shoulders. He was relentless and I thought he hated me until people started coming up to me and saying how much Mr. Mitchell loved me and how he saw my special qualities and was so eager to work with me.
I learned in that moment that teachers can appear to be mean … in order to get us to pay attention to certain parts of our body.

In this new day and age … such things would probably not be allowed.
Personally, that style of motivation was never to my liking.
Gudrun Leben was one of a kind. She clearly had a tough shell that had kept her going through the War and the reconstruction. I am sure her personal history was one that I could have never survived. And to this day, I do not know what she went through.

I kept trying to keep those thoughts on the surface of my awareness in an effort to find compassion for her every time she yelled at me in rehearsal.
And that was often, and every day for a year and a half.
It was brutal. I did not understand what was going on. I tried to be sweet, kept smiling, attempted to do what she asked exactly, but it never seemed to change her behavior towards me.

At that age, I did not have thick skin and so it really got to me.
Truth be told … I went home every day and cried for at least a half hour each evening.
Each day was a miserable attempt to stay positive in this dark and dreary place where I felt like a constant outsider and I felt like the Ballet Mistress hated me.
I know I was not alone in that feeling. I know she yelled at others also. But I did seem to be the one that caught the brunt of her anger at that time.

I tried to figure out if it was me personally she hated. Perhaps it was because I was an American and that she resented the Americans controlling her country.
I tried to look out through her eyes at me to see if I just looked like a baby, naïve, and not mature enough to be here. I tried to see if it was my personal dance style that was very SAB, New York City Ballet style of movement that she hated and she wanted me to have a more Russian look.

But nothing worked! Nothing I did seemed to make sense or made any difference to her

I tried to be strong … Nope that just made her more mad.

I tried to be sweet … Then she looked at me like I was some manipulative child.

I tried to be blank … and not react. That did not stop her tirades on me either.

I finally decided that what she wanted was to break me. She needed to see me break. Perhaps she needed the satisfaction of breaking my spirit.
So, I decided the next time, she yelled at me that I would cry … silently and put my head down trying to hide it.

Shockingly … that seemed to work!
She backed off and the daily tirades went more weekly instead of daily.

For whatever reason, the first 4 months in Berlin were grueling and miserable.
I also did not even get on a stage until the 3^rd Month as a Court Lady in the first act of Giselle.
It was only a pantomime role not a dancing role. I just needed to look like a rich woman on a hunt with her man, enjoying the countryside and being entertained by the local peasants.

Regardless, it was very nice to just put on stage makeup and be on a live stage.
I was concerned that while they had hired me, they perhaps did not like me. I worried that my days might be numbered.

It worried me enough that I decided to go to an audition with the Zurich Ballet to see if I could get another job. I wondered if being in a Neutral Country would feel any different than war-torn Berlin.
So, on a weekend that I had no rehearsals (again), I flew to Switzerland and did an open audition with Patricia Neary from the Zurich Ballet.

Honestly, I was desperate to get out of Berlin! I was so terribly unhappy, depressed, and lonely. This seemed like the perfect door. And a better fit.
This company did a lot of Balanchine works and Patricia Neary was the Ballet Director of that company. I longed to feel as if I belonged and fit somewhere.
I got to Zurich thinking that the audition would be not quite as large as it was. I walked into a room with probably 90 dancers. That was the first shock! The second was that not only was she going to weed people out, a bit at a time, but that this audition was going to last 6 hours.
I am glancing at my plane tickets in my dance bag, wondering if I am going to get back to Berlin in time for class on Monday.

Not only did she want the 32 fouettés, all the point work, and big jumps, but she also wanted us to do segments from Balanchine Ballets.

This is where sneaking into all those Ballet Performances of NYC ballet at the State Theater came in handy.
I knew the style of Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. I had seen it many times.
So, it was exciting for me to show what I could do and I felt confident and secure being in the final 3 girls after all the cuts. I gave myself a big pat on the back for that accomplishment alone.

Patricia Neary told us all that, she would love to have all of us in the company but that she only had one spot available. I was the obvious American, there was a fabulous Swiss girl, and a lovely French girl.

I was not sure if I would get the job, but I was hopeful. I felt I did a very good audition and so I was not despondent for the first time in months.

Perhaps I could get out of Berlin after all.
Patricia said she would send us letters to let us know her answer.

I got back to Berlin excited, slightly hopeful and feeling as if there might yet be a place for me in the ballet world.

A few days later the letter came. Patricia had taken the Swiss girl. Seemed that Patricia was required to give the job to a Swiss person if one was good enough.
I understood.
Switzerland is a small country, and I am sure getting a job there is difficult on a good day.

But I felt depressed again. Stuck in this place with no way out that I could immediately foresee.

I was so upset that I contacted my ballet teachers in Dallas, Ann Etgen and Bill Atkinson to ask if they knew what I should do.

They sent a letter back saying that I did not want to look like a flakey ballet dancer, flitting from company to company. That such actions would give me a bad reputation and work against me in the long run. They said to stay a minimum of two years before switching. I needed to be able to show a resume of many classical ballets and more modern ones. Without the expertise of doing certain roles in certain ballets that I would have a hard time in other companies even getting a job.

So I surrendered into staying in Berlin for those recommended two years.

I suspect that Gert Reinholm heard (through the ballet grapevine) that I did that audition because quickly after I returned, suddenly I was in rehearsals and actually really being in the corps de ballet for real shows at the theater.
At least I finally had work that kept me learning and my mind occupied.

Shortly after that, I finally got my first apartment directly across the street from the Theater. While it was very tiny, it was next door to another dancer and her husband.
So, it was beginning to feel like a more normal life.
I had so much more to learn. And I was only at the beginning of a cycle that would be so difficult that there were many moments when it could have taken my very life.

The next 4 years in Berlin had some of the hardest moments of my life. What was to come … were going to be so difficult that everything else in my life would be measured by them and compared to them.

I would come to know that if I could survive four years in Berlin during the Cold War with the Wall still up … that I could weather anything.

~Suzanne Wagner~