Berlin, January 06, 1996

The before last performance was a little lame, compared to what we've expected. Although now the piece starts to grow together but I discover weaknesses in my role as well as in the others. I met Albert to rehearse on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and I feel now the Choreography has to be more to the point and there are things that are just not right or a little unmotivated. Of course this might not be clear to the normal audience who sees the piece for the first time, neither it is conscious to the director, but to us. When we showed it again, Rudi said it was better although he didn't know why or couldn't describe it, and it was satisfying to know why for us. Within this perfectionism of course we got to be more uncertain about everything. We were more nervous to perform the next couple of times, first of all because our expectations from each other were higher and we knew colleagues were in the audience. At the premier you're always happy if you somehow get it over. You give everything you can which is usually not the best because you're always busy with the surprising reactions of the public? When you realized that the audience likes the piece and at which parts they lough and clap and every performance is sold out with a waiting list of almost as many people as there are tickets, then you think, well I don't want to disappoint anybody, you want to get better higher faster, you start to compete with you're ego, which is giving you a huge pressure and usually makes you feel absolutely discontent and less self assured. So you feel uncertain and a little lame, a little uncomfortable in you're role and all your partners feel that, which makes you being worse. What was a little comfort was that people who saw it at the premier and again, said that I was much better now, but the thing about playing the same piece over and over you want to be perfect at a certain time and it is so hard to realize that you're not a star, and far away from it, that you never really feel that there is no superlative anymore that you always think you're behind yourself and can only give this much. What remains is the hope that next time it will be better.

What I really enjoy though is the nights after. We usually celebrate and waist the rest of our energy until the early morning and at 4:00 or 5:00 am we say good bye usually bruised and totally exhausted. We stay just really few of us and start to perform for each other. Usually Stephan, Ulrike, Rudi, Albert and Gabi are the last, and then there are often different colleagues dancers or actors engaged with other theaters, we dance with or perform for that saty with us until the end. We are usually completely loose and a little drunk, but the last three hours of those nights I will really miss since we are not playing until the end of February.

(He just came in and gave me a little kiss on the cheek (he thought his kiss was big but we have a different definition of big and small since I think the Americans often believe : if you can't make it good make it big:-)