The Moment

 

Standing backstage in the wings, hearing the overture of the beginning of Giselle Act II, everything seemed surreal.

Yes, I am standing on the huge stage of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, which had become my home for the last two years.
But in this moment, the feeling is very … different.

For years I had dreamed of such a moment.
And this is that moment!
I know that many wonder if they will notice such things in the rush of preparation and the powerful forces of adrenaline that happen in such pivotal points in a life.
Oh, I noticed it.
I was not going to miss this moment or feeling. Inside I knew that based on my performance, this may (or may not) ever happen again.
If I do well in this role, it could be the beginning of a shift in my status as a professional dancer.
This was a pivotal moment.
It filled me with hope and dread.
Everything was now in my hands. I would either succeed or fail. Anything in the middle would potentially make me fade away into the mists of time, potentially forgotten in the mass expression of diminishing dreams from other hopeful ballerinas.

This was a moment that I would ask everything of myself.

And I was as ready as I would ever be.

I was filled with the hopes and dreams of my younger self.
This performance was a culmination of such hardship, struggle, effort, pain, joy, emotional expression, personal exploration, and … hope!

Standing backstage, watching the fog being rolled in with the dry ice machines to create the mood of a dark and haunted forest … was not hiding the past from my eyes, but instead revealing it in a new and deepening light.

I am about to go on stage for the first time as Myrtha, the Queen of the Willis. A coveted role that countless amazing ballerinas have danced before me.
I can feel the ghosts of those souls, with me, supporting me, and reminding me to be fully present and to not ever forget this moment.
I would never forget it. I was sure of that. It would be impossible to do such a thing.
I only hoped that my performance would be a triumph and not a tragedy.

Dancing the role of the terrible, angry, Queen, was a role that was a dream that I might have wanted … but I never believed I might get.

I turned to see where Rudolf Nureyev is on stage. I see him seriously warming up and setting his mood by putting on the character of Albrecht (the duke that Giselle fell in love with).
I see his chiseled face drop into the mournful grief, as he dramatically wraps his cloak around himself. An anguished shield against the damp coldness in the forest and the ghosts of unsettled young women who loved and lost their lives to a broken heart.
He picks up the lilies that he has brought to the grave of Giselle. His face a mask of morning … and deep sorrow.
He is a star. He knows it. He owns it.

Then it hits me! I am going to be on stage dancing and interacting with this great man who has literally changed the face of ballet and catapulted it into a new and powerful chapter!
I am living in my own fairy tale within a fairy tale.
I shake my head, and my legs with the intention to release the nervousness and anxiety that is now building up from adrenaline and that realization.
In that moment I smile, and I silently thank him for this opportunity.
It was (after all), his idea and his request to allow me this amazing chance. It was his determined suggestion that pushed Gert Reinholm (the Artistic Director of the Berlin Ballet) to give me this opportunity.
I was just a corp de ballet dancer.

I was no star.
I felt into the fact, that I was still that child who had a dream. And that child had been willing to give up everything to be here.
I had given up everything to come to dance professionally in Berlin. I had given up college (which would have given me the respect from my father), I had given up my dream of being in New York City Ballet (the illusion of my idealistic youthful self), I had given up my country (having moved to Berlin Germany during the cold war with the wall still up between East and West), and I had given up the comforts of America and all those things familiar and convenient.
In this moment, I felt a level of gratitude for Nureyev. I realized that his gift was like a debt that can almost never be repaid.

He saved more than my life.
He had saved my heart.
He had saved my childhood dream.
He had given me hope in a place where so much hopelessness could still be felt in the bricks and mortar of two failed World Wars.
Far from home, I had found someone who would teach me much … in ways that I did not realize at first.

He did not see himself as a guru. But he was a God.
To me, I would learn more by watching him than he could probably ever know. Good and bad.
It felt like a miracle that this star of the ballet world (The Great and Powerful Rudolph Nureyev) somehow decided to see me and somehow he wanted to give me … such a chance.
His gift was so very deep, it made me wonder if I could even … breathe in such a huge gift.
I had to suppress that part that wanted to break down and cry.

Now was not the time for that. The curtain was rising, and I am about to go on.
I tell myself, “Focus on what you need to do. Stay strong! Breathe! And trust your body to know what to do!”

After all, months of preparation have gone into this moment.

My mind reflected on this very precious opportunity that could not be squandered.

I told myself that I was proud of how I had handled the emotional drama that ensued immediately after it was announced that I was to be in the Myrtha rehearsals.

Whew! That was a very tough moment.

I was unprepared in my excitement, that the reigning Queen of the Willis might be a bit … out of sorts over my presence in her rehearsal.
I knew it might be a challenging moment, but I did not expect to get bodily thrown out of the studio, down the stairs and out the studio door.

Ballerinas are a tough bunch. People think that ballerinas are fragile and delicate.
That just means that they don’t know any!
While ballerinas give the illusions of softness and portray a sensitivity and subtlety, inside we are a powerful workhorse of determination, drive, and dreams.
What it takes to get to this place in the ballet world is not for the faint of heart and there is no place for those whose emotions are fragile and breakable. Ballet companies are a chess board of ego dramas mixed with the interplay of passion, creative expression, and deeply feeling individuals who struggle with internal battles daily … that most will never know, touch within, or experience.

Ballet is a world where only the strong survive.

While every little girl wants to be a ballerina, the culling fields of ballet are treacherous and filled with dangerous pitfalls that can end a ballerina’s career in a blink of an eye.
Especially in the 1970s, 1980s, and into the 1990s.

Without the perfect ballet body, any dancer will break down under the horrific pressures of the unrelenting demands of ballet.
Extreme flexibility is essential, but one must also have strength to back it up, because too much flexibility will not allow a dancer to have the strength and power to leap high into the air on the jumps.
Too much power in the legs for jumping can inhibit the long lines, fluidity, and nimbleness that ballet demands.

Not enough turnout from the hips to the knees, from the knees to the ankles and feet … will cause stresses that will blow out those joints and end a dancer’s career in an instant.

Not being thin enough is a determent to the demands of line and the illusion of length, that shows off the exquisite musculature of a dancer.

And through it all, dancers never get paid what they are worth, unless … one makes it to those coveted positions of being a Prima Ballerina Absoluta, such as Eva Evdokimova, whom I am dancing with tonight as the lead in Giselle.

There are moments that stand out and are locked into the memory as a pinnacle of a soul’s journey. Moments that make the dreams of the child … come fully alive.
This was that moment and every cell in my body could feel it.

The magic of ballet, (that opened my eyes to this classical, lyrical, paradise when I was 5 years old), was happening right now, in this very moment.
This was it!

It was a time to “make it or break it”
I feel as if I am a horse in the gate … and the race is about to begin.
This is not the time to hold back. “It is all or nothing!” I tell myself.
I hear the voice in my head say, “Everything in this moment has prepared you for this and you will not fail. It is not possible to fail. You can do this! If Rudi believed in you, then it is time to believe in yourself.”
I reflect on the fact that my mother is in the audience. She has come all the way from Texas to be here. I want to show her that all the arguments with my dad (to allow me to dance) were worth the effort. The expensive point shoes that endlessly fell apart and need to be bought again, were worth it. The boring recitals that they sat through that were so important for me to show them and everyone who I was … becoming … that they meant something!

I feel my breathing change with that thought and I begin breathing in one nostril and out the other to calm myself down and oxygenate my whole body before I go on.
I reflect on the huge bouquet of seventy-five lilies that were in my dressing room when I arrived.
Each flower a precious gift from one of the dancers to me in the company. A huge card filled with well-wishes, Toi Toi Toi’s, Merde’s, and the American phrase, Break a Leg!
Such a precious gift and memory. One that could last a life time.

I wanted to be the tool to open the eyes of others now. Perhaps this performance could inspire the next generation of young dancers to risk it all and find the beauty in the hardship of ballet, and discover those hidden places where there is a type of cosmic fuel that could power their own dreams!

Tonight, I was to be the embodiment of the Queen of the young women who had loved true and deep … but were jilted by the selfishness of young men that could not understand the depth of a young girl feeling love for the first time.
I was to become the vehicle to show an idiotic young man, the terrible trauma that he has inflicted upon Giselle in playing with her innocence and promising things that he never intended to honor.
I would make him experience the pain that he had caused other women from the horrific shock of loving so deeply and not being loved back.
I would show him that stupid young men (just like him), had caused the deaths of so many countless young girls that were now under my control.
My intention as the Queen of the Willis was to ensnare those compassionless and reckless young men to dance to their deaths in retaliation to the suffering that they had caused the women that genuinely … had loved them.

Such is the story of the second Act of Giselle.

And I was to be the dark counterpoint to the profound love of the innocent and beautiful Giselle.

“How many directors would break my heart?”

I was to find out.

“How much heartbreak would I suffer to the lover that was … my art?”

I was going to discover.

While this moment was going to be an amazing beginning.

Many things were already showing me the huge sacrifices that such a high goal and dream would cost.

In the rehearsals, Goodrun Leben had danced me till I literally dropped. Not unlike the story of Albrecht as Myrtha ordered him to dance to his death.
Goodrun was my powerful Myrtha. She lived, breathed, and fully embodied it.
She had the rules of the Russian training in her blood, and she decided to make me do the jumping sequences to the point that my legs had collapsed under me.
When I ended up on the ground, exhausted to the point that I was confused as to how I had ended up on the floor, she harshly announced, “Rehearsal … Over!”
And then proudly walked out of the studio, satisfied that she had succeeded in her intention … to push me to the breaking point.
While I was left to discover … after she left, that I was actually injured, and had overstretched my cross tendons in my left ankle.

I did not know that this was going to be the first of a few serious injuries that I would have to figure out how to recover from.

But I proudly had done all the physical therapy and rehabilitation to strengthen my ankles back into performing capacity for this show. Even when it seemed “touch and go” if I would be able to do justice to this performance with an injury.

But I am here. I feel strong. My ankle seems solid. I have managed to get past all the hurdles that were thrown in my path.
I feel powerfully accomplished in this moment.

It was a moment that I would not allow anyone or any situation to take from me.
I had made it to this moment … on this stage, with these people.
I thanked the angels and guides for helping me and could not help but say a quick prayer as I allowed my Catholic upbringing to be included, as I made the sign of the cross for good luck, and as an invocation to the divine in me to rise up.

The music is almost to the moment when I am to emerge from my grave and move like a ghostly mist across the stage and begin to call the other young women into the mournful dance to bring Giselle into our group.
I am the energy of that mist that will forever dance upon this stage.

I am a ghost … formed from the hopes of a young girl who believed she could do something great on a stage.

She is with me in this moment and tonight … together we will dance.
Without her dreams, I would not have reached this far.

Without her faith in what she knew she carried inside; I would not have had the courage to become who I am right now in this moment.

This performance is for her and all those that are inspired to be something more beautiful. I wanted this performance to embody the dream of all dancers to know that they too could become something so very human and something so much more.

May my words awaken those dreams that have been sleeping in the graves of former selves … that were so disappointed in other times.
I call you to awaken now … into the world of artistic potential and open your eyes to see beyond the fears and suffering of our human selves and realize that within you is your own Giselle longing to awaken, forgive, and dance with all of us in the mists of time … forever.
~Suzanne Wagner~