Barnstorming in Switzerland
Hitchhiking to Paris Auditioning for Bejarts’ Ballet of the XX Century
Mudra December 1977 - By now half the students were rejected down from 45 to just over 20. Unfortunately the ones cut were mostly my friends. Why did they keep me? I was just as misbehaved, and some of them were much better than me technically… I was not very pleased. I was also besieged by offers from some gay dancers and teachers. I was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the constant attention I would receive outside the classroom. On a regular basis Maurice Bejart and his main dancer Jorge Donn would come into my class and sit there intensely watching me.
This was the most frustrating part about wanting to be a dancer. One night I stayed up cursing at my fate. Why would I be given such an immense passion for dance and not be a homosexual as well? How unfair! I cried myself to sleep. Life would have been so much easier if I was. Perhaps a much shorter life but who is to say what fate has in store for us.
Anyway, this attention from Bejart did not really bother me because having such a high caliber audience spurred me on and I would do things that were not normally possible for me technically. When leaping I would rise higher, and more pirouettes and better balance.
The company left for a tour and life got less interesting at Mudra.
Fortunately there was a bright spot in an otherwise dreary January: Flora Cushman. She was my dream come true! She was a world renowned teacher and chereographer from Jerusalem who arrived as a guest teacher for a three month stint. She studied with Martha Graham in New York and was also her piano player for some of her classes. She truly embodied the “blood and guts” as she called it, or the “essence” of Martha Graham’s technique and philosophy. It was a joy to be part of her class. For me, every class was a performance, and she was my attentive audience. She taught me how to overcome the pain of trying to mold my already aged 20 year old body to look and feel like a real dancer. She taught me how to breathe, how to move and how to expand my presence into the dance space and take it over, to rule that space like an emperor.
Despite Flora’s best efforts I remained very dissatisfied with how the students were cut from the school the previous month, and was still in conflict with some of my teachers…
Later that month one of her students from Israel arrived with his girlfriend. They had not arranged accommodation and since I had a very large apartment in Brussels, I invited them to stay with me. Three weeks later they decided to hitchhike to Freiburg, Switzerland where the girl lived, and knowing my extreme displeasure with the school they suggested I take a break and invited me to come along. I was being pressured by my ballet teacher to go to his house for dinner. Finally I agreed… “sure I said sure how about this Saturday?” On Friday I told the Artistic Director my father was very sick and I had to go to Greece to be with him. So we embarked on our journey to Switzerland.
Europe was in the middle of the worst snowstorm in recent history. It was not easy going. For three people to hitchhike is bad enough; to do it in a blinding snowstorm is another. We practically walked through all of Luxemburg (30km) and made slow progress through France. Two days later we were still plodding along in France. The girl had to get back to school, so she went off on her own the rest of the way, arriving back two days before we finally showed up…
Three days later, we were just 10km outside of Bern (about 45km to Freiburg from there). By now it was after midnight and bitterly cold; we were dropped off on a dark road with no bus or train station in sight (our usual sleeping accommodations for the night) Yaron pointed to a barn and suggested we go sleep there. I told him I would rather get run over by the next car. Just as I finished saying that, I saw a car coming, and I stood in the middle of the road and flagged them to a stop. I must have been a scary sight with my long winter scarf wrapped tightly around my head with only my eyes showing. (Red Brigades and the PLO were very active with kidnappings and plane hijackings. We were stopped numerous times while hitchhiking by police.) It was a Mercedes limo with an elderly man and his very beautiful much younger wife…
I explained to them our predicament and they agreed to let us come in the car and warm up as they lived only 5km down the road. We eagerly jumped in. In conversation they told us they were planning to go island hopping in Greece with their plane, and were very interested to go to Israel as well… as we neared their “village” the man suggested we stay with them for the night and his wife could drive us into Bern in the morning because she was going shopping. We happily accepted their invitation…
As we drove into their exclusive village I noticed an armed guard at the entrance… Their house was a very spacious, beautifully converted barn, except for the exotic animal skins on the walls… In the morning the wife knocks on the door and asks me if we can be ready to drive with her in half an hour or we could fly with her husband later. Not clearly understanding what she meant by flying, and not willing to leave such a soft bed so soon, I said okay we will go with her husband later.
We had a big breakfast of unlimited coffee, eggs, toast, peanut butter and marmalade prepared by the couple’s daughter. Then we set off to “fly” to Bern, whatever that meant. I thought perhaps he had a very fast car. The wife’s statement kept ringing in my ears; fly with her husband… but lo and behold, he drives us into a private airport, parks outside a garage and we enter to find a 6 seat Cezna.
We get in, pull up to the gas station and fuel up. As we take off, I remark about what a pity it is such a cloudy day… he takes us up above the clouds on an hour and a half tour of all Switzerland. At one point he had to take oxygen because of his heart condition and hands me the controls!
What an exhilarating feeling… and so simple… turn left, turn right, up, down… well he did not stay on oxygen for too long after witnessing my flying as I was heading towards Matterhorn and wanting to do a 360 around the peak… anyway we finally land on a small airport outside Bern, we thank him profusely, he gives us his card. He is a doctor and owns an ophthalmologic clinic in Brazil, and tells us to stay in touch. Later that year the movie “Boys from Brazil” is released and I never contacted them again. We exit the airport only to find out we are exactly the same distance from Bern as we started, 10km.
As we trudged on through a small country road, our feet cold and wet once again, I turn to Yaron and asked: “You know what the moral of this story is?” “I have no idea” he says. “It is better to drive with the wife than fly with the husband.” I reply. We broke up laughing, and the thought of what might have transpired with us and the young wife in Bern, kept us very warm the rest of the way.
We finally made it to Freiburg on a train from Bern. There was just no way to hitchhike out of Bern. I stayed in Freiburg for 2 weeks. I discovered the University cafeterias would allow you to refill your plate with food at no extra cost… finally I had enough food in my belly. I decided to hitchhike to Paris because I heard Bejart was holding an open audition for his company. I contacted some of the students that were cut from Mudra and convinced them we should all go to the audition. His company was performing there and I got tickets because I was still officially a student at Mudra. Yaron came along out of curiosity to see what would happen to me.
Next day I showed up with 2 of my former classmates and registered, received our numbers put them on our leotards and stepped on the stage. As I walked out I saw a lot of the dancers from his company were there in the audience. Upon seeing me they all began to chuckle and shake their heads. Bejart himself was conducting the class/audition.
As I was standing at the barre doing the opening warm up, Bejart walks up to me, stands right in front of me, as I continue to do my exercises. He looks at me straight into my eyes practically nose to nose and asks me: “What are you doing here? Why are you not in school?” Without stopping my routine, I said: “I am here because I want to be in your company.” He then says to me: “If you want to be in the company you have to stay in school!” I then smiled and said: “I want to be in your company through the front door not the back door!” We locked eyes for a brief second and I was not sure he was going to slap me or hug me. He huffed as only the French can do, turned around and continued to conduct the class.
He kept me on through the most difficult part of the audition going across the floor with many leaps and turns. I had a feeling that my brashness may have convinced him I belonged in his company and not the school. Three cuts later my number was not called and I left the stage. Some of the dancers came over to me and congratulated me. They thought I did very well. I told them if I had done well he would have accepted me into the company. They told me the same thing: “go back to the school and in a couple of years you will make the company without an audition.” I then repeated what I said to Bejart: “I want to get into the company through the front door not through the backdoor.” (It was well known prerequisite for being in Bejart’s company you first had to pass through his bedroom.) As soon as I said that they broke up laughing. They stopped abruptly when Bejart gave them a stern look form the stage. I walked away.
I could not stay in the school for another 2 years. My money would not last another 2 months. I tried applying for jobs in Greek restaurants, but as soon as I told them I was a student at Mudra they would laugh…
I stayed in Paris another week and then took the train back to Mudra. I had been gone over a month now. Mudra had a very strict Artistic Director who would send students back home if they were late. I walked into Mudra the next day, and upon seeing her I said my usual “Bonjour madame” as if nothing had happened. “Bonjour Athanasius” she replies. I was not expecting such a warm reception. She said nothing about me auditioning in Paris, and she did not ask about my father’s health. I could not figure that out. If she did not know about my audition in Paris she should have asked about my father’s health. If she knew about the audition in Paris I expected to be scolded, and was prepared to give the same response I gave to Bejart and to his dancers. She said nothing else to me.
The ballet teacher whose invitation to dinner I had accepted and did not show up for said nothing as well. Bonjour monsieur Pares, I said as I walked into his class. “Bonjour Athanasius” he replied. He never asked me why I didn’t show up for dinner. The other manager who I also made a date for dinner and did not show up said nothing as well. So it continued for the rest of the week. One of Bejart’s dancers returned from Paris a month later, and I asked him if he had heard any reactions from Bejart. He told me that Bejart called the Artistic Director and told her to make sure I stay in school until he gets back.
Yaron had left to go back to Israel and he told me I was welcome to come to Jerusalem and study with him and Flora Cushman. I spoke to Flora and told her I wanted to come to Israel and join her company. She said I was crazy; “You are not Jewish!” she exclaimed. I told her she is not Jewish either so we must be alike. She laughed. “Besides, you only have one male with 9 female dancers, and I think that is too many women for one male dancer to handle”, I said. She laughed.
Two days later I got a one way ticket to Israel. I walked into her class fully dressed and told her: “sorry I cannot take your class today, but I will see you in Jerusalem!” she gave me a big hug and said whispered in my ear: “you are crazy!”
The crazy thing is I found out later the role that Bejart wanted to prepare me for was for the Greek Dances by Mikis Theodorakis. That is why he and Jorge Donn were coming to watch me in my class. If I had stayed and Bejart did make the “indecent offer” what would I have done? I did not want to find out.
My instinct was to run, and run I did.
An artist is able to break through social, cultural and religious barriers. An artist is able to freely mingle with alien environments, and bridge large chasms of separation designed to keep us apart. For almost 3 years I felt more at home in Israel than my home country of Greece. In Israel I finally fulfilled my dream to dance on stage and be written up in the American Dance Magazine.
An artist is able to break through social, cultural and religious barriers. An artist is able to freely mingle with alien environments, and bridge large chasms of separation designed to keep us apart. For more than 3 years I felt more at home in Israel than in Greece. I was welcomed as a celebrity. “Why would a Greek dancer want to live in Israel and leave New York? He is not even Jewish.” In Israel I finally fulfilled my dream to dance on stage and be written up in the American Dance Magazine.
Ballet of the XX Century the company Bejart built was decimated shortly afterwards by AIDS. It took the life of Jorge Donn and many others. At the time it was the only profitable dance company in the world, He staged massive events outside the normal ballet and opera houses.
As for me, I embraced my destiny and continue to do so every day.
