The Theater

 

 

There are places that the body and mind can go. Places where magic is made, and ecstasy lives.
The trick (as a dancer) is to make that happen on a stage.
We know that certain places are portals to other dimensions and places where the past and future touch in moments.

Theaters are such a place.
Some ballet studios are as well.

But there is something very special about Theaters. Theaters live and breathe. They birth dreams and they are instigators of turmoil. They are the gatekeepers of hope and the keys to the rewards in the kingdoms of artistic expression.

Theaters remember and hold the desires and fears of all that have set foot on that sacred ground.

It is a special place where some expectations are achieved … and others are broken to pieces.

It is a place where an audience goes to retrieve the deep emotions that are buried and securely hidden behind the façade of respectability and appropriate behavior.
It is a place that is a living breathing expression of all the dramas, upsets, and turmoils that beat the hearts of mankind. Theaters are a place where we celebrate our humanity. Where dark emotions are accepted and allowed to live, thrive, arrive, and die.
A theater is a kaleidoscope of the stories of mankind.
In a theater, humanities greatest dreams … live still in the ethers, the music still plays, and the dancers still dance.

In the darkness before others arrive, a theater feels like a vast, empty space. But there is a heartbeat that resounds in the inky blackness if one is willing to listen.
A theater is designed to have its energy directed towards those performing. And as the energy comes towards the performers, those performers will take that enthusiasm, appreciate, and focused energy … in … and then we will bounce it back out into the audience.

A theater is its own self-contained system. And each theater has its own personality.
My first theater was the Bob Hope Theater at SMU in Dallas, Texas. Built in 1968 with funding from the late actor. It was newer and yet filled with the promises of greatness that all theaters hold.

I remember standing on that stage and staring out into (what seemed) such a vast audience. (It only held 392 people.)
But to me it was Carnegie Hall!
I had arrived!
Theaters hold the demand for excellence that has been cultivated and carefully practiced.
Only the best shows … end up on stages! Performing is expensive. It takes a lot to put a show together.
The magic I felt in that moment … standing on that stage … looking out into an audience … was something I will never forget.

I knew this was my place! This was where I belonged! This was a place where dreams were made and where the energies birthed here could continue to inspire others … forever.

The first time, I heard applause for my dancing was the pinnacle for myself as a small girl. I was 8 years old on a small high school stage for a recital at my ballet school. But it was magical!
I was sure they were just applauding me!
I know that sounds silly … but to the mind of a child, I was sure that they were only looking at me!

I felt seen.
I felt special.
I felt safe to be whatever I wanted to be in this vast emptiness that held the hopes and dreams of so many other young performers that came before me.
But most important, I wasn’t scared!
I know that sounds strange, but I had spent my entire life being afraid. Terribly afraid.
But I was never afraid on a stage.

I know that many have stage fright, but I had the opposite of that.

On a stage I felt the orchestra pit as a musical barrier between myself and the audience. A special space that allowed them to see … but not touch me. A metaphysical portal that only magic could cross from myself out into the audience.
And only love and appreciation could cross from them back to me.
As a dancer there are many fears. But if one carries them onto the stage with you, those mental concerns will cause slips, falls, costume mishaps, missed entrances, and dancers forgetting entire sequences, etc.

For some when those moments (that happen to every dancer) manifested, it can collapse certain personalities.

Again, for me, that is where something bigger than my own being would take over and make something memorable happen to which I would later feel proud rather than miserable.

Over and over again, I would take the high road and instead of allowing the mistake to shatter my confidence in myself, I would use that energy to find greater humility and grace within my being.

Sometimes, when something so terrible happened that I would be hard to recover and reframe the moment, another dancer would come in and offer their condolences and personal insights into what they too had experienced.
I have had conductors come back bringing champagne and two glasses to applaud my professionalism in the face of gross miscalculations from a Pas de Deux. And they would make me drink enough champagne until we were laughing about it.

Rehearsals are for getting the body to remember the passages. They help the mind to become integrated with the body. They allow the training to become automatic.
And only then can the soul take the body for flights into the fantasies of characters that will live in the dreams of children and adults forever.
Theaters hold the lives of those that have danced and performed as filaments of energy that continue to dance, perform, and exist … long after they are gone.
Anytime you have souls putting everything they have into a performance; they leave something behind.

There was a dancer from Berlin that was at a reunion (that many of us attended) that had been a soloist with the company. But when we got backstage … she melted down. We had been allowed back stage before the bedroom scene, in Romeo and Juliette. This woman was having a combination of a panic attack and the rapid expulsion of deep grief. Many of us went over to console her.

She just kept saying, “I can’t! I can’t! I can’t take a step onto that stage!”

And then would burst into tears again.

I told her that she could. “This was her stage; this was her place in another moment in time!”
And that just made her cry more!

She said, “You don’t understand! Performing on this stage was the happiest time of my life! Nothing! NOTHING, has ever been the same after I let ballet go!
That is true for all of us that have been in the theater and performed live.

Nothing can replace such a space, a feeling, or such a moment of intense concentration and focus.

We are in that moment being the best that we can be. We are reaching with our fragile human self to something that is beyond our capacity. But we long for those ecstatic moments that transcend time and space.
We intuitively connect to the hearts and souls of those before us and that will magically come after us. We leave an echo of our attempts behind for others to connect to so that they too can learn to fly.

We are the spirits that empower the impossible to move beyond body and show that we are a divine light…

Even now, my past is a living, breathing part of the hopes and dreams of those that are stepping into that magical world of live theater.

I give that light and love even if it is unconsciously still dancing in those theaters of my youth or the powerful great halls of my professional moments.
This is what makes life transcendent and memorable. This is what beats the hearts of all performers. This is what calls us back to the earthly realms and continues to drive us to achieve, become, dream, and dance to the heartbeat of life.

~Suzanne Wagner~