Toni Lander and Me
Part 1

 

I am sitting on the floor of the large studio, in the corner, (to stay out of the way) in the Abdallah rehearsals that are going to last for the next 3 months.
The company is preparing for a world premier! And they are all very excited. Enthusiasm fills the air and anticipation is bubbling in the studio.
World Premiers are a very big deal. Ballet West is going to take a Bourneville ballet from the past and resurrect it. It will take everything from all of the dancers and staff to pull this off and Toni Lander is at the helm of this ship.
It is her ship, and she gets to make all the choices and decisions.

It will take everyone to pull this off.

Everyone … except me!

I sit quietly knitting, with the intention to not pull any energy in my direction but to simply be a presence in the space.

It is my silent but strong form of rebellion to Toni Lander. She can hate me, but I will not be invisible, and I will be professional even in the face of her outrageous venom that she directed at me.

Yes, she hates me. She said it straight to my face. It is a terrible shock to hear such a thing announced so blatantly and with such rage.
A rage that I instantly knew really had nothing to do with me. I had always admired her from a distance. I had hoped to connect with her but she was never … ever there.

Okay, perhaps I am exaggerating. But I had only seen her teach 3 classes for the company in the entire time I had been with Ballet West. She was listed as Ballet West’s Principal Teacher but I never saw her.
I sat counting stitches in the pattern of socks that was my primary focus in that moment.

I needed a mental activity to distract my mind so that I could work through the events that had led to this moment. Keeping my mind busy allowed me to be reflective and put difficult emotional pieces into place.

I could see that many things had been going on below the surface in Ballet West for a while and in my innocent desire to be as good as I could be, I had not completely seen the undercurrent that was now unveiling itself.
In this moment, I thought it had all started when the casting went up for Abdallah. But it clearly had to have begun much sooner.

The casting went up and everyone is excited to see what the parts are and what they are going to be doing.
Everyone is excited and sharing thoughts and ideas.

I keep scanning the long list for my name but it is nowhere to be seen.

I think to myself, “Hum! That is odd. This is a full evening production, like a Swan Lake. Such things will require every dancer to fill the stage and make it magical. It is unheard of to leave any dancer out of such a production.”

I think, “I must be mistaken!”

I look again.

Nope. My name is not anywhere.

I think to myself. “This has to be a typo! I am doing a lot of soloist and principal roles in Ballet West, and I am not even in the Corps de Ballet sections. I am not even doing the acting piece of the mother. Bene Arnold is doing that! This can’t we right! Somehow, my name has just been left out!”

I think to myself, “I will just ask Toni about it!”

Intuitively, I had made a decision to not ask that question in front of the dancers because it is very embarrassing!

I wait a day to ask, thinking that someone will notice and change the casting. But nothing had changed in twenty-four hours.
I finished class and went to the offices of the company to find Toni Lander and ask her personally and out of the earshot of other dancers.

I find her and calmly walk up to her because deep in my heart, I just think that there is some typo.

As I am walking up to her, she sees me and instead of smiling warmly, her eyes turn cold and dark, her body stiffens and her neck begins to flush red.

I am trying to figure out why my presence is having that impact on her. I even look behind myself thinking that she is scowling at someone else, but there is no one.

I am now concerned, but I continue to walk towards her.

I smiled and said, “Hi Toni. I think there might be some mistake in the casting because my name is not anywhere on the list for Abdallah and so I do not know what rehearsals you are expecting me to attend. I did not want you to think that I was neglecting rehearsals for such an important project.

I notice that she has pulled herself up to her full height and is glaring down at me.

She and I are close to the same height but in that moment, she needed to appear taller, and she was clearly looking down at me, with authority.

The anger in her eyes was not anything that I could have anticipated. It seemed absurd for her to be angry at me. I had never done anything to her.

I had her on a pedestal and my entire choice to be here in Ballet West was to have a chance to be coached by her. I thought she walked on water. But her life with her children seemed to have taken a higher priority. She clearly did not seem to be coaching dancers anymore and I had shifted my attention from wanting her support and help to instead accepting Bruce Marks’s appreciation of my talent and his great gifts of good roles that I was able to stand out in.
What came next was as shocking as it was inappropriately insulting.

Her icy cold statement of fact was something that I was unprepared for.
She said, with a venom and hate that I had never heard in my life, “No! You are not in my ballet! Nor will you ever be in any of my ballets! I don’t like you! I have never liked you! You are not a Bourneville dancer, and this is my ballet and I get to pick and choose who is in and who is out. And you are out! You will never dance in my production of Abdallah!”

It was like she intentionally wanted to hurt me. She did not just slap my face with her words, she just kept slapping me with each sentence.

Stunned, I said, “So you do not want me to understudy any part, even the corps parts or even the mother?”

Her cheeks now bright red and her eyes black as the night, she says with haughty certainty, “No! I don’t need or want you to do anything! You are not trained in this style, and you have no capacity to dance the way this production will require!”

By now, I feel as if I have turned enough cheeks, and she has overstepped a line. She is bordering on verbal abuse. She is insulting me, and my talent.
She knows nothing of what I learned in Berlin and living in Europe for 4 years.
I felt as if now, the gloves where off and while she is entitled to her opinion, I was in no way going to allow her biases to go unchallenged.

I replied back to her with a clear disdain in my tone, “Toni, you are entitled to your opinion, but Peter Schaufuss would beg to differ with you!”

I used that statement intentionally because Peter Schaufuss, was also a Danish Dancer that was as famous as her.

That seemed to stop her tirade for the moment and her mouth dropped and she took in a sharp intake of breath.

I continued, “Peter Schaufuss, set La Sylphide with the Berlin Ballet and we had Bourneville classes for months to put on that production. We also did Les Sylphides and followed all the old rules of movement to keep the period style of those pieces. Just because you do not think I naturally have that style … does not mean that I do not understand that style. And if we are really talking about training and capacity to dance this style, I want to point out that you have not been teaching classes in this style, so the Ballet West dancers (in my book) have had less training in it than myself.
She stood there glaring at me, rage boiling over in her eyes, and the tension in her jaw is now twitching. I can see the pulse in her neck as her blood pressure is highly elevated.

Then with a voice that made me want to vomit, she said, “Regardless, You are not in my ballet! You will never be in my ballet. I don’t care if you are the last dancer on this planet!”

It was clear that her mind was made up. So, I turned and walked away.
I got dressed and went home that day. I needed to cool off.
I had to think through a lot of things.
A big concern was that if Bruce Marks also felt this way, then my job was going to be in jeopardy. And I might be needing to look for another job. But as I went over things in my mind, I did not think I was about to be fired.

It seemed possible that this outburst of anger from her had to do with a lot of pent up resentment because of her marriage and divorce from Bruce Marks and him declaring in overt ways that he was now gay!

There were more hidden forces at the root of her behavior and I tried to step away from her atrocious treatment of me with a more objective eye.

She also was looking terrible. She was too thin, clearly stressed, and there was a gray energy in her aura that was unfamiliar to me. I wondered if it was from all her smoking.
What did become clear was that this level of anger really had nothing to do with me. I might be a trigger but I was not the problem. She needed to be angry as someone and perhaps she could not be angry at Bruce so she decided to be angry at a person that was clearly getting some of his attention.
I had never done anything to deserve this type of rage being directed at me. I had admired her from afar but really never saw her at the theater.

It was more shocking because she did not know me. At all!

She did not know that she was the single reason that I left a soloist contract in Berlin to come to Utah to dance.
Because of a hope to have a great ballet coach I had left a huge German Opera House Theater, with a great salary, and unlimited potential because I knew Germany was not where I wanted to live the rest of my life. My time there allowed me to recognize that to be a great dancer … one needs a great coach. Someone who is skilled in cultivating the subtle nuances that are so essential to make talent into something special and show how to become a character that is not familiar yet to the psyche.
But from the moment I got to Utah, it was clear to me that she was not teaching or coaching.
She was Bruce Marks wife and was busy raising the children. Being in the Artistic staff of Ballet West was not her priority. That was crystal clear, and I had let go of any fantasy that she might coach me within the first few months of being at Ballet West. Being the new person that was hated by some of the company was enough stress. Holding onto a pipe dream of connecting with Toni was … ludicrous.
What had made up for that disappointment was that Bruce Marks kept putting me in great roles and even though I was hired as a corps dancer I was doing lots of soloist and a few principal roles.
And that was good enough for me. I was getting to dance and have more opportunities than in the large Berlin Ballet Theater system.
I was content. And I thought I was happy.

Up to this moment.

At my house, I decided that if I was not to understudy anything, and I had no rehearsals for the next 3 months … I was going to knit socks!
I needed a project and a way to give something back. That made my mind calm down. My intention was to knit a pair of socks for each of the male corps dancers while rehearsals were going on.

As I sat in the corner knitting socks, I never looked directly at Toni. But I did not want her to be comfortable either. She needed to feel how horrible she had been to me.

And little did she know … but I was still learning the choreography for every position, and every dance step in the production of Abdallah. What I knew was that people get injured and it is good to have someone who knows what is going on and can jump in at the last minute.
So, here I was, watching and listening to the process that all dancers go through learning steps, style, coordination, timing of the Bournenville techniques, and it is clear that no one realizes that I am not dancing in this production.

All dancers are very self-focused. And too often we are so busy paying attention to what we need to do that we do not notice others that might be suffering. Most dancers are like a pack of wolves. As a pack member, you never show weakness. If you do, you are attacked in various ways. Dancers are known to not show weakness, hurt, upset, stress or strain. We do what we are told … and we belong. Vulnerability is something carefully controlled by the mind and heart.
I was not going to get in the way or have an opinion but I was not going to be invisible.

My childhood was a constant exercise in learning to figure a way to be seen in a household where everyone’s feelings (other than my own) were more important.

In ballet, I had finally felt seen.

But not today!

Once again, I am facing the same feelings from my childhood where I do not matter. No one is noticing that I am suffering. No one is awake or aware enough to even question, why I am never standing up to learn steps or sequences. Everyone is busy doing what they need to do and me sitting in the corner knitting for days in a row, never even registers.

I talk softly to my inner child, telling her that we are okay, while watching everyone taking videos, sharing excitement, and wondering what will come next.
I am not a part of all of what is going on and no one is aware.
I finish my first pair of socks and unceremoniously give them to him. He is thankful and shocked. Pleasantly surprised at my generosity.

I decide to take a break and leave the studio, to decide who I should make another pair of socks for, when Sondra Sugai, comes up to me and says that Bruce Marks wants to speak to me in his office … privately!

In my mind I think, “Oh shit! Now you have done it Suzanne. Toni is probably pissed that you are constantly in her rehearsals and now what if we get fired?”

Nervous and barely breathing, I walk down to the offices, feeling like I am walking to another firing squad moment.

I get down to Bruce’s office, knock on the door and he says to come in.

What came next was not at all what I was expecting. And what was going to be asked of me was going to be harder to do than any principal role I had ever attempted.

Roles were about to be reversed.

I did not see this moment coming.

Nor how it was going to shape me for the rest of my life.

~Suzanne Wagner~