Gert Reinholm – The Dancer Lands of Anorexia and Bulimia – Part II – Embodying Kali

 

Ballet allows dynamic characters to develop through our art. Characters can become something more like caricatures over time.
Gert Reinholm, learned to carry himself with grace, dignity, and power. You could tell that his “way of being” included a dramatic flair. He loved the moody qualities of the theater. Such as, dark lighting, and ballets that were powered by complex emotions. After all, his life was shaped from being a young gay man living through the 2^nd World War in Germany.

Some people are living effigies of what they found inside that they valued greatly, and they will hold onto that throughout their life, never allowing the façade to break.
I believe this pattern was more common in the older generation of dancers.

Even in New York City, there was a woman that would come to open classes that was clearly an older dancer, but she had become an extreme caricature of that young dancer still seeking to gain the attention, the limelight, and to feel special. She wore stage makeup to class and dressed in dramatic ways to unconsciously get others to look at her. She still desperately needed to be seen.
I do not blame anyone for hanging on to those places in the past.

Artists are more sensitive than most and while all people in life have a pinnacle point in life (A sort of heyday!), some have trouble letting that life go and moving forward.
But I know from experience that finding how to let our past go is a much healthier way to live. It allows us to find those next precious experiences that will allow us to find other types of depth and fulfillment.
In many ways, Gert Reinholm was also a caricature.
Yes, it was Berlin in the late 1970’s into the 80’s. Yes, Berlin was the “gay mecca” in Europe at the time.

Yes, he wore pancake make-up and eyeliner, covered by those big sunglasses.
As a dancer, it is not that big of a deal. All art forms create a type of permission to such individuals that want to explore other … edges.

On many levels, I was a very quiet and non-threatening dancer. (Unless you pissed me off or threaten those that I love.)
But other things would set me off. One of them would be when another dancer is endangering themselves.

Such a moment happened my second year. There was a young German girl was in the company and she seemed to be getting thinner and thinner.

Dancers are naturally thin but then there is the type of thin that looks like the bones are sticking out the pelvis and you can hardly see muscles.
We were still getting used to the concept of anorexia and bulimia.

I had seen it at SAB, but then we did not have a name for it.

One girl in SAB was so scary thin that it was difficult to look at her. I would notice that her mother would watch from the door. I overheard her critiquing her daughter, saying, “If you do not do triple pirouettes to both sides every time in class you will not get dinner.

Needless to say … that girl often did not get dinner. She was thin and gaunt.

And then, that terrible day happened.
Some things get burned in our memory and are forever etched into our minds. This was one of mine.

We were in class, and we were doing big jumps, when this poor girl went up in a grand jete and came down, only to shatter her femur.

It was a terrible injury to witness. Something is scarred into my brain forever. She was rushed to the hospital, and she died three days later from the leaching of bone marrow into her blood and getting into her lungs from an embolism.

That was when I knew that what that young woman had going on inside was something much more serious and potentially deadly.

I have had to witness many go down that pathway at times. It is a terrible doorway with no easy endpoint.
In Berlin, I had moments hearing young, beautiful women, throwing up in the bathroom … on purpose.

I could never do that.
I hated anytime when I had the flu and it caused me to start vomiting.
I literally thought I was going to die each time I threw up. I had distant memories of some past life, where I must have died from a condition where I could not stop throwing up.
Besides, I loved food too much … to want to taste it … again … going the wrong way!
So, in Berlin here is this young, insecure girl who is clearly struggling with body issues. The winter hits, and she is constantly wearing bulky legwarmers and those plastic sweatpants that bake you like a sauna.

I go into the studio one day, just as she is taking them off to put on the bulky wool legwarmers and I literally stop and gasp. She is a walking skeleton. Her pelvic bones are sticking out. You could see the outline of her pelvis and her sunken, unhealthy look. I noticed her skin was sagging and looked like a sheet over a bag of bones, and her coloring was pale.
I could only see this girl going down that same pathway to her death, just like the young girl at SAB.

This is when something inside me snapped, and my raging angel leaped into the fray.

I walked out of the studio and when directly to Gert Reinholms’ office.
I do not ask the secretary to see him, I just walk in the door to see his shocked look, as I storm into his office.

I do not wait for him to speak … I literally couldn’t wait that long.
I am somewhere between terrified and … furious.

I did not know if I was protecting myself from seeing another horrible accident happen in front of me again, or if I was trying to save this girls life.

I am sure it was a bit of both.

I stutter out in English (because I knew he spoke English), “You have to do something about that girl. Do you realize how thin she is? She is going to die! And I am not going to watch that happen in front of me for a second time! I saw a girl at SAB go up in a grand jete and come down and shatter her femur! Do you realize what kind of bone loss one has to have to shatter the largest bone in the body? I will not watch this happen again. Not on my watch! You will get her out of class and get her some help. I don’t care what you have to do but you have to do something! We are in the death of winter, and she is going to die if no one does anything! So … what are you going to do?” As I put my hands on my hips.

He looks at me and says, “Who do you think you are? You are not a principal dancer! You can’t come in here and order me around. You do not have the power to tell me what to do!”

I looked at him with a look that would have melted the sun in its fury!

I said, “You listen to me! You will get her out of class, and you will get her some help! Or I will not be in rehearsals!”

He looked at me incredulously and said, “You can’t do that! You are not a principal dancer!”

And I said, “Watch me! She needs to have someone care enough about her to save her life. You have the power to do that. I can only make you aware of how serious this really is!”
He responded, “You cannot threaten me!”

I said I am not threatening you … I am trying to warn you so that a life is saved!”

And I walked out the door like some avenging angel.

That fire-breathing dragon inside me comes out most when she feels injustices are happening and others are in peril.
In that moment, that dragon could care less about the rigid structures of the German seniority system within the theater.

Fuck the rules and the “god dam” protocols of behavior!

I went back to class. Within 25 minutes that young girl was taken out of the class.

That was when I felt I could finally (once again) breathe.

That young girl would end up being gone for 3 months. When she came back, she was heavier … but she looked sort of puffy with the weight.
I did not care, at least she had more meat on her bones.
But she did not speak to me the rest of the year. She was furious with me. And I did not care. I knew my intent was to save her life and that … something greater than me … in that moment took over my whole body.

I have had this feeling many times and it seems as if an angel or guide literally takes over my body and demands to be heard.

I wasn’t until I was leaving, that she came up to me and said, “I want you to know that I have been very angry at you. But I realize that your interfering was your way of trying to help me!”

I calmly responded, “I knew that you were very angry at me, but I decided that I had the strength to take your anger. But it was becoming unhealthy for you to take that same anger out on yourself. I was afraid you were going to die. And that self-hatred was going to eat you alive. I just could not live with myself if I watched that scenario unfold twice in my life.”

I think she was stunned.

I am glad I did what I did … I would do it again … in a heartbeat.

The Gurus say that Anorexia and Bulimia are conditions associated with a disowned internalized Kali.

In Sanskrit, “Kali” means, “She who is Death.”

Kali is the Hindu goddess of time, death, and doomsday. She is often connected to sexuality and violence.
She was the anger that sprang from Durga (a protective and motherly goddess) in response to her desire to protect her consort, Shiva.
She is that raging anger inside each of us that comes out when she needs to protect those that we love.

She is an energy that is designed to come out aggressively into the outer world when there is danger.

But some women, internalize Kali.
If Kali is not allowed out (in healthy ways to draw the line and create boundaries), then she will internally seek places to do battle.
She will battle invisible foes or us … in an attempt to  control our mind, or anything such a food, to rein in the intense emotions that want to distort reality.
When Kali is loose,  sees danger everywhere. Danger in food, danger in others, danger in invisible disease that can lurk in hidden things. At that point, she begins eating our life essence … instead of the blood of her enemies.
Some unconsciously decide to take all their anger out on themselves. As they try to suppress this energy (that was to be used to protect the innocent in the outer world), they will (instead) blindly do battle internally with themselves.
Then Kali lashes out at us and begins trying to drink our lifeforce. We become our own enemy.
I have seen many women that were anorexic in the ballet world and other perfectionistic artistic fields.
It is often a soul desperately trying to control their body, their mind, their reality, and their emotions.
She is like a dragon at a gate protecting something fragile and innocent.
She is called the “Dark Mother” because when we do not love ourselves or know how to nurture ourselves … then that part that needs internal love and sustenance can become a raging demon that takes over to protect the person against an enemy that seems difficult to battle, because that enemy is in our own mind.
Seems on that day … that my Kali externalized to fight for a person who was losing the fight inside.
She leaped out of my body and became the avenging goddess to protect someone who was too weak to see what was destroying her. And that was her own expectations and her own desperate need to control powerful forces and emotions inside.
My Kali had to be stronger than hers to save her life.
It was a totally unconscious act that took over and demanded a change.
Many years later, I had a friend that was doing a photoshoot about the goddesses. She said that the only goddess that I fit was to do Kali.

She asked if I would be willing to embody her in a photo shoot for her book.

I politely declined.

While I adore my inner Kali, she does not come out at the whim of others. Nor is she an energy that I need to cultivate more in this life.

I love my inner Kali more than anyone can understand. But she is a powerful force to protect the innocent and she is not an energy that I like to randomly let out without good reason.

Later, while at Ballet West, she would have her moment in the limelight as she came out playing the role of Carabosse.

But the director at that time, wanted to control her and instead of embodying a character that he wanted that was less than who she was, she would opt out and go back inside and wait for a real battle. One that would allow the powerful force that she truly was to fully emerge and shape the next manifestations that my life was going to require.
~Suzanne Wagner~