Dancing in the Light (14 page)

All that began to change when I found that trusting my spiritual nature produced a more positive creative flow.

It worked in a remarkably simple manner. I trusted what I can only describe as my higher unlimited self … or my “super-consciousness,” as Freud would have put it. I knew about the subconscious
and the conscious. I was learning about the super-consciousness.

The higher unlimited superconsciousness can best be defined as one’s eternal unlimited soul—the soul that is the real “you.” The soul that has been through incarnation after incarnation and knows all there is to know about you because it
is
you. It is the repository of your experience. It is the totality of your soul memory and your soul energy. It is also the energy that interfaces with the energy which we refer to as God. It knows and resonates to God because it is a part of God. As in the mind of man there are many thoughts, so in the mind of God there are many souls.

Our higher unlimited self, which has been a child of God from the beginning of time, is with us every instant, silently (and sometimes not so silently) guiding us through events and experiences which we elect to have for ourselves in order to learn more fully who we are
and
what the God energy is. That energy is
totally
aware and the more we listen to it, the more aware each of us can become.

The great spiritual masters such as Christ and Buddha were totally in touch with their higher unlimited selves and were therefore capable of accomplishing whatever they desired. They were fully realized human beings who understood all of their incarnational experiences and were able to incorporate their knowledge and understanding into lives of service for others. While the goal of realizing oneself is basically quite simple it is also awesome. It is to realize that we are part of God … which is to say, total love and light.

My personal goals were not so awesome. I just wanted to be as fully realized as I could, both as a person and in my creative expression.

So I began to put into practice techniques I had learned from reading metaphysical literature (meta meaning “beyond”), talking during my travels with people involved in their own self-realization, and
ideas that I came up with just by being alone with myself (meditation).

I started to work with these principles and techniques in as earth-plane an environment as there is—a sweaty rehearsal hall.

Putting together new material can be as frightening as it is exhilarating. You’re never really sure whether it’ll work or not. It may seem wonderful to you, but how will the audience react?

Alan Johnson was my director-choreographer. I had worked with him for years until he finally accused me of not knowing anyone else. He is a wiry, taut-calm overseer who was the dance captain of
West Side Story
and is now the heir apparent to Michael Bennett and Bob Fosse. He has impeccable taste, great steps, and a unique sense of judgment and pacing. He is never flustered, is inordinately patient, and possesses a composed dignity that causes people to want to work with him. He smokes Lark cigarettes, is almost five feet six, wears a small stud earring in his left earlobe, and rehearses in the street clothes he comes to work in, usually either a shirt and jeans or safari pants with T-shirt that blends. His nose twitches when he’s about to say something comically absurd and he is never mean and temperamental, as are so many other choreographers who cannot, apparently, help themselves. Alan somehow resolved the pain of being a gypsy and saw no need to inflict the same fate on gypsies who work for him now.

He was also into higher consciousness and claimed that working with Mel Brooks (Alan directed
To Be or Not to Be)
provoked an acceleration of that process or they would have taken him away in a white coat. Alan had gotten in touch with some of his past-life incarnations and many of our rehearsal hours were wasted (nothing is ever really wasted) in discussing our spiritual conjectures. We exchanged metaphysical books and talked about whether it would
ever be possible to dramatize a film about reincarnation without its looking tacky, or B-movieish.

Alan understood as well as I did that we both allowed
intelligence
to block our free-flowing creativity. I would watch him grapple with that conflict as he stood smoking one of his Larks, staring at the floor agonizing over which steps he would paint it with. I could see him edit the movement even before he tried it, for fear that the audience would either have seen it before or would not be able to understand its sophistication. He was not a man of facile symmetry, yet movement that individualized itself was not easily identifiable to audiences which were only in the last ten years beginning to fully embrace dance. Alan was basically an intellectual and we both knew what that meant to creativity. It meant
blockage.

I had the same problem. The mind, with all its potential ramifications, was the great limiter. Our purpose in working together was to unblock the mind’s limitations, and just go for it. He winced whenever one of his appreciators complimented him on his “intelligent choreography.” He longed to do stuff we could “get off on.”

So, sometimes, when he was stuck and I and my gypsy dancers became impatient, we would encourage the rehearsal pianist to play anyway and, catching a kind of madness from one another, outrageously gyrate, undulate, bump, twist, and grind our way to a rousing, vulgar, childish finish because
we
had nothing to lose with our mischief; That’s when he’d come alive and say, “Keep it in,” and go on to temper our devilment into a number of comic proportions that he had had no intention of doing in the first place. Once again we would then agree that creativity required living in the moment. Too much thinking was simply a handicap.

Alan and I were so linked in understanding that often we choreographed on the telephone. His classic “Tribute to Choreographers,” which won him
many awards, was done that way. If our mutual concept was clear, our intention without contention, all that was left was to execute the movement.

And now he and I were about to confront Broadway and the New York critics. We had put together my shows for Vegas, which went on to tour in theaters around the world, but New York was another animal—not so much the audiences, because they were usually fairly alike, even in Europe and Asia. It was that bedeviling body of eloquent critical cynics, who took pride in their autocratic roles as
the
pacesetters, who could render you paralytic with fear.

I was going into New York as a variety artist, playing in a Broadway house, doing my little song, dance, acting, comedy numbers, and didn’t want to be defined as a Vegas act. I had played Vegas for years, and loved it, by the way, but I wanted this to be a cut above the green velvet jungle. So did Alan … which meant that all the surefire, pull-down high kicks had to be adapted. They needed to be there for a reason other than applause, although why applause was beneath critical acclaim I still can’t figure out. Obvious “mitt-grabbing” was too honest an intention for the New York critics. They wanted to decide if they would be moved to applaud—they didn’t like to be manipulated. Audiences
came
to be manipulated, but critics were too smart for that. Ah, the intricate ramifications of the judging of fantasy. How seriously could you take the exercise of simply giving the audience a good time?

The creative people involved with building a new show work as a team. For me, if a prima donna is involved, I would have to carefully weigh whether his or her talent would be worth the emotional price. It usually isn’t. That goes for dancers too. I’d rather have good dancers with stable personalities than a brilliant dancer who was a bad apple. All the other apples live too closely together in the barrel to avoid contamination. Negative attitudes are contagious.

So, attitudes of easement and flexibility were the number-one priority of my company. I couldn’t have it any other way. It had been like that for some time, and because so many others around me were working toward their own spiritual enlightenment, we preciously guarded those qualities we had learned to trust and maintain in ourselves and each other.

Many people who came backstage or had intermittent associations with us remarked about the goodwill, the centeredness that prevailed with every member of my company. I was proud of that. We put our spiritual growth to practical use and it literally showed up in the working environment. If there were arguments, we talked them over and worked them out, almost always coming to the conclusion that there had been a karmic lesson to be learned from everyone’s point of view.

The star of any company creates the values of that company. If the star is irresponsibly late, the rest will think time doesn’t matter. If the star is argumentative, arguments prevail. If the star is unprofessional, rough edges begin to tear away at the internal fabric of the entire production. So, the star is ultimately responsible for what goes on.

During the rehearsal process, the director-choreographer is the helmsman. The star looks to that creative mind for sustenance and support and leadership. But when the show has opened, it becomes the star around whom everything revolves.

And during rehearsals, the lighting and costume designers are as important as the performers because everyone knows “if you don’t look good, what point is there in working your buns off?”

Gypsies are famous for overtly expressing their feelings about the costumes their bodies have to move in.

And when the costume designer presents his lovingly painted color drawings to the company, carefully spread out on the dance floor to achieve the utmost effect, he is as nervous as the choreographer,
the star, and the performers in front of their first audience. His talent is about to be assessed, judged, critiqued, and, he knows—inevitably—“improved upon.”

But you know you have to say it now. If you wait until the costume goes to the headers, you’ve possibly blown seventy-five hundred dollars.

Or you might be blessed enough to have a Pete Menefee working with you, who not only was a gypsy himself, but readily and without any inner dialogues understands that physical discomfort inhibits movement.

The lighting designer is the recipient of compliments only from the director or choreographer who sit out front because those of us on the stage never get a chance to see what we look like. We can only feel it.

“Feeling” your way is the process by which stage magic is made.

We felt our way through rehearsals, doing our stuff to the blank wall, capable only of imagining what the final effect would be. Christopher Adler helped me write my lyrics and material. I say “helped” because any good writer knows that the words have to flow from the heart of the performer, especially a performer who not only writes, but has to mean what she says. I am incapable of saying something on the stage that I don’t mean. Even when it comes to telling a joke. It’s not enough just to get a laugh. It has to spring from my own truth. Or the audience won’t laugh anyway. I had learned that by bitter experience—which brings up a vital point where personal live performing is concerned.

Any musical performer who works “live” agonizes over how to communicate with the audience. We may be solidly secure in our singing, dancing, musical ability, but when it comes to “being ourselves” in between numbers, we need “patter.” Comedy writers are called in by our agents, and the result is well intentioned, but never really works.
The truth is, you just have to experiment on stage. And experimentation in front of the big black giant is enough to reduce an accomplished and seasoned performer to the rank of blithering idiot. We need to be more secure than that. So we go through the motions of telling jokes stemming from someone else’s sensibilities and, depending on the reaction,
that’s
where we find our true spontaneous selves. So, knowing who you are on stage is the ultimate goal. The audience never responds to artifice. They can detect sham immediately and just as swiftly respond positively to something you do that comes out of your gut. They want you to be real. That’s what they’re there for. They want to come away knowing who you are. Well, that means you have to be willing to tell them. No one can really write for you.
You
are the architect of your personal experience. So, if you decide to go into that line of work, you have to be prepared to take personal chances.

None of this applies to proscenium theater, where you inhabit another character and are traditionally forbidden to break the proscenium. Personal-appearance performing
requires
that you crack the formality of that dividing arch, giving the audience a glimpse, even if imperfect, of where you really live. This kind of performing is not about perfection. In fact, it is the opposite. When you break the boundaries of the proscenium, you are saying you are one of
them.
A comfortable performer relishes spontaneous moments that occur with an audience. Because
we
know that the audience knows it’s real. What happens between the “big” numbers is generally unrehearsed, and though the overall shape of such a show remains the same, the personal material never comes out exactly the same way twice. But to find your comfortable stage personality takes time and the willingness to relax into spontaneous imperfection.

So, good writers write
with
you, not
for
you. They attempt to ascertain your areas of comfort and ease and bolster those areas with jokes and comments. A good writer never forces you to try something that he believes he needs to prove. Instead he implores you to try to be yourself.

That’s what Christopher did. That’s what Alan always does. Behind the scenes creative artists know they are there to serve the performer. The performer is, after all is said and done, the person the audience comes to see. They don’t want to feel that words have been cleverly fashioned to spill from the performer’s mouth, or that movements have been crafted on a body that is unwilling to commit to them.

Even the lyrics of a song need to express either what the performer feels, or what the audience believes you feel. If audiences don’t believe what you’re saying up there, they just won’t come.