“It’s not who you are that makes the world respect you, but the power that stands behind you. It is not you that the world sees, but that power."

—The Last Gift of the Master Artists by Ben Okri

My first appointment with power happened when I was twelve years old. I was scared that day. I didn’t belong in this ballet class. Everyone was better than I was. The music was faster. The steps were harder. I wanted to disappear. Somehow I made it to the end of the class, but then Miss Madeline told us to waltz across the floor. I panicked. The waltz turn was tough. I was sure I would fail and embarrass myself, but — lo & behold — I didn’t. Miraculously, muscle memory came through for me. My arms and legs worked together and I managed to waltz across the floor. By the time, I reached the other end of the room, I had goosebumps the size of porcupine quills and I told myself, “I’m going to dance forever!”

Miss Madeline is now 90 years old and still teaching! In February 2023, I completed a mini-documentary about her.

On the wings of ballet, I sailed through the identity crises that typically besets puberty. Every muscle and bone in my body accommodated my quest for technical perfection — higher extensions, more pirouettes, better alignment, etc. Ballet gave me an epic sense of purpose, a sense of direction, a sense of accomplishment, and I didn’t have to grovel to make friends anymore. (I mean, who needs friends when you have a sense of purpose?!?) Paradoxically, I started making good friends as soon as I stopped needing them.

The day after graduating from high school, I boarded a bus to New York City to follow my dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer. That year in NYC was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. I was no longer a big fish in a little pond and the competition was fierce. My self-worth took a beating and I started eating too much pizza. Fortunately, right before I lost whatever competitive edge I may have had, I landed a job with the Ohio Ballet.

David Bondio and Nancy Muller Ohio Ballet Logo in the early 80s Photo: Ott Gangl

The chasm between student-dancer and professional-dancer was so wide I almost didn’t make the leap. At first, the director, Heinz Poll, gave me the tiniest roles and pulled his hair out in every rehearsal. He made me repeat the same steps over and over until he was satisfied. Technical tricks drove him crazy. One time, I ignored the music in order to do an extra pirouette and he had a conniption!

Me in George Balanchine’s "Concerto Barroco" Jacob’s Pillow, Becket, MA 1981 or so Photo: Peter Deacon

I’m convinced the only reason Heinz didn’t fire me was because he saw how hard I worked. Eventually, things started to click. I lost weight and gained confidence. Heinz started choreographing dances on me and casting me in lead roles.

I was well on my way to the stars when, quite unexpectedly, I started falling Icarus-like into the sea. My body simply could not sustain the expectations I set for myself. I lost too much weight and the injuries began. After months of debilitating back pain, I was diagnosed with a stress fracture of the spine and told that I might never dance again. Heinz said he’d kept my position in the company open until my back healed. I flew home to Maine to recuperate. While there, I had my next appointment with power.

Once my back had healed, I returned to the Ohio Ballet eager to pick up where I left off, but it was not to be. Right away, I experienced the unshakeable feeling that I no longer belonged there. I’d learn new choreography but the steps wouldn’t sink in. The city of Akron felt like a pitstop on the way to Somewhere Else. When the injuries started up again, I tearfully told Heinz that I was leaving the company. I thanked him for the best two years of my life. We hugged and I flew back to Maine. (Heinz and I remained close until the end of his life.)

Ultimately, the ballet world messed me up. The law of diminishing returns ruled my body with a tyranny that almost did me in. I could not get skinnier. My extensions could not get higher. I could not do one more pirouette. My technique stopped improving. In fact, the harder I worked, the more difficult everything felt. I started having anxiety attacks, bouts of depression, and mornings when the simple act of getting out of bed was a supreme act of courage. Then I met Tony Montanaro.

We met during a rehearsal for the Nutcracker. He was Herr Drosselmeyer and I was the Sugar Plum Fairy. He was 60 years old and recently divorced. I was 27 and the only “relationship” I had ever had was with ballet. Tony was the first person to tell me I should “express myself” when I danced. It’s hard for me to believe this now, but at the time, I did not know what he meant.

Early on in our friendship, Tony invited me to see him perform at a small theater in Portland. It was a life-changer. As soon as he started to move, I felt an effervescent joy rising up from the center of my bones. I had never felt that way before. After the show I literally ran up to Tony and said, “I have to know what you’re doing.” Over the course of the next fifteen years, I learned a lot. Mainly, I moved closer to the Source of that effervescent joy that had lain dormant for so many years.

Tony’s unique approach to mime, movement, improvisation, art, life, etc., brought me closer to the “self” I had neglected and starved for so long. Tony’s workshops did that for people.

Tony and I were married in 1989. We started combining our art forms (mime and ballet) and toured our two person show all over the world.

Tony and I were together for the last 15 years of his life. During that time I took all of his workshops and acted as ghost writer for his book, Mime Spoken Here. I found it quite natural to write in Tony voice from the perspective of someone whose life was saved by his methods and madness. Tony oversaw every word I wrote. When I failed to say things clearly or precisely, he took me into the studio to move and improvise and actually experience the things we were writing about.

The real “glue” holding Tony and me together was something beyond this world. Both of us were desperately interested in the miracle of inspiration and even though I lost my way, I never stopped looking for and studying miracles.

A few years after Tony died, I had my next appointment with power.

I had seen Laurie Carlos on Broadway when I was in high school. She was one of seven women in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf and that show rocked my world.

Fast forward about 25 years. Tony was gone. I was alone muddling my way through life and desperately trying to understand his approach to improvisation, when I learned that Laurie was coming to Maine to teach a workshop. I signed up immediately. Within minutes, I knew that Laurie was my next teacher and I took several workshops with her before she died in 2016.

During that first week-long workshop with Laurie, I had an epiphany regarding “Tony-Style Improv.”

Tony and Laurie were similar insofar as they were both more interested in the improviser than the improvisation. They did not try to turn us into great improvisers; rather, they used various improv exercises as a “way in” to the source of our most organic, original, authentic impulses. In the process of accessing this source, a lot of garbage came up. I call it the sludge of self-consciousness that accumulates over years of living in the world. But I digress. I mainly wanted to talk about how Laurie was different from Tony because it was that subtle, profound difference that sparked my epiphany.

Throughout her workshop, Laurie asked only one question: “What is your experience?” We heard it over and over again.

Then one day, she asked it with such force and urgency that it caught me off guard. She had just explained an improv exercise that I didn’t quite understand. Innocently, I said, “I have a question.” Before I could say another word, Laurie bellowed, “What is your experience?!”

Her question felt like a hammer blow to my forehead. In a daze, I stammered, “I’m . . . confused?”

I still don’t know if that was the “right” response, but I’m quite sure that’s when Laurie’s approach started to clarify and enhance Tony’s. I began to understand the difference between “I have a question” and “I’m confused.”

“I have a question” would have been okay in Tony’s class. That is, I need to ask my question to prepare for this upcoming performance, right? Not in Laurie’s class.

In Laurie’s class, there were no upcoming performances to prepare for; there was only how I feel right here and now. Laurie insisted that we put the horse before the cart; that we focus on the source of our impulses rather than the impulses themselves. This was Tony’s intent, too, but I needed Laurie to drive the point home.

At best, the impulses themselves are diagnostic. They will tell you whether you’re coming from the right place, but beyond that, they have no real value . . . at least not when you’re intent on finding and living your truth.

All these stories are examples of what I call “learning backwards.”

Learning backwards starts with an event — a moment in time and space — that moves you in a way that surpasses understanding. The learning happens when you start dissecting that moment in order to understand it better. This learning process has its own timing. It may not start until years after the event or, like a seed that falls on rocky ground, it may not start at all.

Fortunately, I was quite familiar with “learning backwards” by the time I heard about National Dance Institute, founded in 1976 by the international ballet superstar, Jacques d’Amboise.

When I started teaching and performing in schools, I tended to teach more mime than dance because, except for ballet, I didn’t know the first thing about teaching dance to kids.

Around this time, I spoke with my dear friend, Roberta Berman, a sculptor and art teacher at Bank Street School for Children in New York City. National Dance Institute had just finished a residency at Bank Street and Roberta was impressed. She urged me to visit their website nationaldance.org. From that moment on, I started learning backwards.

Since then, I have taken five teacher training courses at NDI. After each two-week course, I write pages and pages, not so much about all the new things I learned — there is that, of course — but mostly I write about the things I have yet to understand. I want — need! — to know the “hows and whys” behind the “whats.” Specifically, I need to understand how and why even the most “average-appearing” kid instantly starts dancing with the focus, enthusiasm, and commitment of a superstar! What is that all about?!?! So while I started “learning forward” — learning new dance combinations and acquiring the tools and skills of an NDI teacher — I am still “learning backwards,” communing with the source of my goosebumps to better understand the miracle of childhood and how the NDI Method so effectively sets it in motion.

My training with NDI gave me powerful teaching tools. It also opened my eyes to what young people can accomplish when their energy is fully engaged, sustained, and mobilized through music, dance, mime, and other forms of expressive movement.

I’m still learning grand lessons from these master teachers. Their classes and example continue to inform my career, enhance my life, and fuel my ambition.

I firmly believe that when we use the arts to magnify what is sublimely right about us, then what is inherently wrong with us will disappear like darkness when you turn on a light.