Lawyers, Legality, and the Powers of Some

 

The venom of words is something that can hit me harder than most. Because the words can lie but the body can be saying something else.
Many people can say horrible things, but their body carries no power to actually do the actions that the words intend. Such people are not really a threat.

But when Gert Reinholm, said those words to me. What hit like a ton of bricks was that the venom in his voice and his body language were congruent.
People ask me, “How do you know what someone is really up to?”
My answer is that I look for congruence between words and body language.
All dancers are attuned to the language of the body. Words are always secondary to us. We are feelers. We notice subtle movements and that speaks louder than the words of most people not living in an artistic world.

We understand that most live in their head. And their body is often telling the truths that the mind cannot bear or comprehend.
But when the posture of the body conveys a deeper darkness, and the words align with the eye contact with the force of personal intent to cause harm …
That signals a palpable shift in the energy exchange between two people. There is really nothing like such a powerful feeling … that tastes like cold metal as it slices into one’s being.
I felt that knife try to enter my body. I was unprepared for the force of the vicious intention behind it.
I had never felt anything to that degree of maliciousness up to that point.

All I knew (instinctively) was that I had to get away from this person.
I stood up and I had no words.

There were no words that could correctly be expressed at that moment.

Dancers are selective as to who they share things with. Ballet especially is a highly competitive art form and one does not show emotions that are unclear or chaotic and not have someone want to take advantage of that moment of weakness.

I learned early on in ballet … and in life … that people hit you the hardest when you are down. They do it instinctively and unconsciously at times.

I could feel I had taken a huge hit. I knew that an area of my aura was shattered. I had to get away to be able to think clearly and strategize my next move.

And I was clueless in that moment to even know what a next move was or how I should proceed.

I go back to the studio and go through class and head off to a rehearsal.
My mind is reeling, and I am still not centered or feeling grounded. A part of me wants to pretend that all of that did not happen. But that level of denial in this situation was folly.

I am in the dressing room changing when a beautiful, very talented, young German girl comes in with tremendous excitement saying that she had just been promoted to a soloist position by the director.

Now, you need to know that I adored this dancer in every way. She was beautiful, genuine, sweet, sincere, authentic and one of the kindest people I had met in Berlin. I enjoyed spending time with her and I taught her English haphazardly and I learned much from her in German.
She was the epitome of everything that was beautiful about ballet.
In that moment, I knew what Gert Reinholm had done. He decided to twist the knife inside my soul even deeper. Literally hours after he offered me the position and I refused, he offered it to her in order to make his point crystal clear.

He wanted to hurt me.

But I could in no way hurt her.

She was too beautiful of a soul. My heart would have broken more if my ego had needed to let her know that I was offered it first. It would have taken away from her that very special moment and excitement.

I could never be that cruel.

I could have never lived with myself.

So, while my heart was breaking, and the fear seemed to climb up into my throat … to the point that I began to feel as if I was going to have a panic attack. I instead decided to not focus on myself. But on the love that I had for this amazingly bright and beautiful young woman.

I could hear the angels in my head whisper, “That position belongs to her. She is German and she will be here long after you are gone. She is destined to be a part of this theater for the rest of her life. You are not! That position was never supposed to be yours. It was supposed to be hers. Trust and let go. Let her see the joy that you have for her. Feel the gift of her heart to yours and remember that grace always comes at a high cost.”
That is when I felt the knife in my chest come out, I could breathe again. My heart got warm in my chest and the icy metallic cold of the directors venom began to dissipate.

In that moment, I learned that the antivenom for hate was the genuine love I had for her.

There are souls you meet that are oddly familiar. There are souls that touch you and you touch that transcend time and space. There are souls that are so familiar that you would swallow the poison rather than harm them with what is being inflicted upon you.

She was one of those souls.

The moment I stepped past my own attachments and fears and instead focused on the love that I had for her, the arrow that was aimed at me, deflected off the armor of the true love I had for her.

And for that moment … I was free.

I hugged her and cried for her. I knew that this meant so much more to her than it did to me. She was a German girl rising up in a company that was a mixture of much diversity and great talent. And she was young.

I learned that day that celebrating the accomplishments of another were (at times) more important than celebrating my own.

I felt that place inside that knew deeply that the beauty and success of others does not in any way take away from my own.
It is a core truth that I have never forgotten and I continue to try to share with other women that are open.
After the moment slowly shifted, and I was able to get dressed and walk outside in the cool, crisp air of northern Germany, I felt into my next step.

The door in Berlin had not just shut in my face it had thrown a grenade right at me.

I admitted to myself that there was no going back.
Gert Reinholm did not just try to throw me out into the snow, he was trying to imprison my soul in his dungeon.

That would never do.

Not now and not ever.

I could feel some ancient conflict from a past life that seemed to be right on the edges of my consciousness. I could not see what happened but this moment felt too close for comfort.

This was clearly an old game that we had been playing out again and again.

How does one step out of the karmic entrapments of “Maya”?
I did not know in that moment.

But I believed that there was a door. I just had to find it.
I called Eva Evdokimova on the verge of tears, but trying to keep my shit together.
I told her what had transpired.

She said that there was a lawyer that had dealt with this situation for another dancer in the past. She gave me his name and phone number. She said, I should call him now.

Which of course I did.

So, approximately 5 hours after I had taken the worse psychic and emotional attack of my life, I had an advocate and a lawyer.

This lawyer explained that this game was very familiar to him. He had handled 3 other situations that had transpired in a similar manner. He knew the game, he knew the players, and he knew the legalities of the contract.

He also explained that while I had been actively manipulated to go past the year agreement to let the know I was leaving, that I had entered into a negotiation in good faith. But that did not matter to the theater. He had already been down this road.

This theater had a lot of power. Perhaps too much power in his mind but that was not his to determine. The Deutsche Oper Berlin had a lot of money to play this legal game and it was going to cost me.

And he did not lie … nor was he wrong.
For the next six months, my lawyer would arrange a meeting with the Intendant to the Theater and Gert Reinholm.

At every (supposed) meeting, my lawyer would show up and none of them ever would.

At first there were excuses such as; they were out of town, unavailable, or in another meeting. But then they just stopped trying to pretend and never responded.

Every time my lawyer showed up. I had to pay him to appear. Even when they did not.

It was an interesting game.
The process of fighting back (in my silent and legal way), clearly pissed Gert Reinholm off. I was taken out of everything.

I had class every day and no rehearsals at all.

That kills a dancer’s stamina and makes us weaker.
Seemed that his intention was to destroy me physically as well as emotionally and psychically.
I thought that I was trying to calmly not make waves other than to just want to be released from my contract with Berlin so I could go to Ballet West. But clearly it was not going to be that simple.

I kept believing that if I stayed calm and kind and not too aggressive or upsetting to the nature flow of what was going on in the theater, that I would chip away at that wall of anger and that eventually he might come around.
My coping mechanism that year was to pack boxes and ship them home by mail.

Every time I got depressed and down, I would ship a box home. I felt like I was clearly telling the universe in no uncertain terms that, “I am going home! One way or the other!”
The days seemed darker than before. The nights seemed longer.

I kept trying to keep my head up but most of those that I could talk to and confide in were no longer in the theater.

I played mind games with myself.

One of my favorites was to go to the huge department store, KaDeWe and buy a bottle of French Champagne, fresh brioche flown in from Paris that morning, some amazing cheese, and some Hungarian salami, and go off to the Charlottenburg Schloss (castle) and make myself a picnic in the park, I would sit on a blanket and pretend that this was my castle and I was enjoying an afternoon outing. I would sit with my back against a tree and look at the castle, in between sleeping and meditating. I would wander the grounds looking for secret places and hidden gardens.

Oh, and I would eventually figure out how to drink that bottle of champagne over the entire day.

At times I would offer passersby to join me. But more often than not, I sought the most hidden corners of the castle grounds and laid in the grass … trying to make sense out of this moment. I was trying to find the meaning to it, and how to best move and shift myself rather than focus on trying to shift the director.
It was clear that I was changing but I did not want to become some hateful person … like him. I wanted to move through this process in a way that at the end of it … that I could live with myself.
My goal was not to harm anyone in this process.
In the graceful gardens of the Charlottenburg Schloss, I created or heard the mantra, “No matter what … No Matter what … No Matter What!!! Be kind”

That motto would be with me for the rest of this life.
It did not matter what others did. It only mattered how I responded to it. And hopefully I would respond with kindness and not let the monsters of jealousy gain a foothold in my psyche.

The game continued and as the darkness of the season closed in, we had a horrible winter. It was as if the mood I kept trying to keep at bay was externalizing and the weather reflected back to me my angst, fear, and heaviness. The clouds were low and foreboding and the snow was dense and icy.
Stress chips away at your reserves. This moment snuck up on me in ways that can only be done with one is in a lot of denial.

I did not think I was in denial. I was trying to deal with the issues and legal rigor Marol that kept arising.

I kept telling myself that I was doing my best and that somehow there would be a break and I would feel the happiness that was now buried deep in my core. I could feel that I was hiding from an enemy that was seeking to find my vulnerable places so they could hit me some more.
And just when I thought that I was getting nowhere. Out of the blue, two soloists got injured and suddenly they needed me!

My roles had been unceremoniously given away in those months of seclusion. And now, I was on the rehearsal lists and being asked to perform.

My mind wondered, “Is this the break I was looking for? Is Gert Reinholm no longer angry? Is this his way of saying that he is sorry?”
In that moment, I did not care. I was in rehearsals and this gave me a moment to show that I was bigger than the petty issues that had been playing in the background.
I leaped in with both toe shoes on and ready!

I would not hold a grudge! I would be professional, generous, and show my commitment and sincerity.

I also believed that I had to do a phenomenal job in those shows.
I naively believed that if I took the high road, perhaps he would as well.
But the pressure I put on myself was more than I had ever done. And the added caviat was that the roads were so bad that they decided to put something on the roads that ended up being highly toxic and everyone started coming down with lung infections.
The first time I got sick we were preparing to go a mixed performance series.
I went to the doctor and they sent me to the respiratory rehabilitation center where I was to do a breathing inhaler series of steroids.

I got to the place only to discover that they were so full that people were sitting on the floors of the hallway with this breathing apparatus.

And I was one of them.

The doctors knew what was happening, but they did not seem to be able to stop the road crews from putting this ashy black substance on the snow to melt it.

It got so back that by that performance I had pneumonia, and I was feeling terrible because I was going to have to tell Goodrun that I could not perform.

So I told her at the end of class that I was very sick and was afraid that I could not perform in a few days. She looked alarmed because so many dancers were out with injuries.

She said that her sister was a doctor and that she would get me a broad spectrum antibiotic and in a few days I would feel better.

I did not want to let them down as I saw this as my chance that if I bent over backwards to make the “Show go on!” That perhaps he would return the kindness.
True to her word, that afternoon, Goodrun had the antibiotics and I immediately started taking them. Sure enough, in a few days I felt significantly better.

And the show when off without a hitch.
What I did not know was that I was more stressed than I realized and that I was pushing my body way past its limits.

I was going to realize how strong my mind was and how I had the ability to keep my body going with my mind.

Dancers have to do this. Ballet is all about overriding the pain mechanisms of the body.

We are trained to do the impossible, and believe that the impossible is possible.
We are the hope of humanity to move beyond suffering. We are the inspiration that shows the pathways that transcend karma.
I had devoted my life to being a light in a dark world.

But one cannot be the light when the darkness is eating away inside.

One cannot see a door if one refuses to feel what one is hiding from.

I was hiding from my own fear of failure.
I was terrified to let others know I was in such terrible pain.

I was determined to overcome all challenges that presented.

And I was too young to understand that the expectations I had on myself were inhuman.

My body was breaking under the pressure and incessant demands of my mind.
My fear of facing my own fear … was tearing at the persona that my ego kept needing to keep intact.
I had been coping with being unhappy for too long. And now there was going to be a price to pay.

 

How close will I get to the doors of death?

Before I realize that currently … I am inept.

Death shows a way out of the problem.

But life is about learning to solve them.

It was going to be time to embrace the whole.

And see that there is something beyond the goal.

That one that was to determine if I would succeed or fail.

The one that I would try to avoid … to no avail.

Dancing in the darkness of my mind.

All my attempts to be patient and kind.

Were really a way to avoid what was lurking inside.

And now she was about to show me all the places I hide.

~Suzanne Wagner~