Patsy and me in Luneburg Germany c. 2021

If that hot chili pepper marked my first triumph over an identity crisis, meeting Patsy marked the clear second.

In those days, my only guide through the ballet world in Europe was an international dance magazine that I schlepped everywhere until it fell apart. There were hundreds of ballet schools listed in this magazine and I usually chose one at random and tried my luck. But there was nothing random about my decision to attend the Ballett Schule Kuppe-Loew in Stuttgart. I was drawn to the photo in the advertisement. It was not a typical ballet photo of a dancer in a pretzel-perfect pose. It was just a pair of legs from a little above the knee to the floor in a standing position. The photo conveyed a kind of secret code to anyone familiar with the way highly trained ballet legs look when they’re doing nothing. Later, Patsy told me that she took the photo.

There I was at the Ballett Schule Kuppe-Loew warming up for my first class. Whenever I wanted to make a good first impression, I wore my favorite purple, spaghetti-strap leotard, a short black skirt (a gift from my best friend from the Ohio Ballet), and pointe shoes. Part of my warm-up involved going to the bathroom slightly before class started but Where the heck’s the bathroom?!? 

The Ballett Schule was on the third floor of one of the most prestigious buildings in the city. On the ground and mezzanine levels, there was a café, a ballgown/tuxedo shop, a movie theater, etc. The third floor was a labyrinth of long marble corridors flanked by closed doors. I wandered around, pointe shoes ’n all, and got lost. Just then, an elevator door opened to my right and out walked this tall, slim, impeccably trendy, gorgeous woman. She appeared to be a ballet dancer about my age. In broken German I asked, “Entschuldigung Sie bitte. Wo ist die toilette?” (“Excuse me please. Where is the toilet?") I must have been quite a sight because Patsy’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. In perfect, heavily accented English, she apologized for the confusing nature of the building and escorted me to the toilette.

All through class, whenever I glanced at Patsy, she was staring at me. After class, she told me I could take free classes at her mother’s ballet school whenever I wanted. She also invited me to take the advanced class at 10 AM every morning, taught by Hitomi Asakawa from Maurice Béjart’s company.

Apparently, Patsy told everyone about “the redhead who came to class last night.” When these accounts were parroted back to me several weeks later, it was clear that Patsy “saw” me right away. She told her mother, for example, that if I didn’t dance, I would go mad. She was right. In fact, I was going slightly mad at the time. Patsy’s observation validated me in a way that a successful audition could not. Later, she also told me that as soon as we met at the elevator, and despite my flaming red hair and bright purple leotard, Patsy saw only grey.

Patsy and I spent more and more time together and, like Susie, she started moving me — gently, firmly, competently — around the game board of my life.

After the morning ballet class, we would hang out at Patsy’s apartment until the afternoon class and “eat” lunch. She never asked me what I wanted, she simply made two of what she always had: a large mug of coffee with hot milk, raw sugar, and two heaping tablespoons of cinnamon. The cinnamon was so thick and slimy that we drank our coffee with a large spoon. The “entree" was Patsy’s concoction of hot milk and bee pollen served in a tiny ceramic pot. I never had a lunch more perfectly suited to my tastes and needs. Of course, part of this perfection had to do with our cosmic connection and mutual passion for ballet, art, music, literature, etc. Once when Patsy quoted an icon in the ballet world, I asked her to write it in my journal. This was my way of inviting her into the innermost sanctum of my world and neither of us took that lightly.

Page from my journal. Stuttgrt, Germany c. 1984. Photo: Patsy

December 3, 1983

The first afternoon I spent at Patsy's apartment, she took it upon herself to bring my outward appearance more in line with the person she knew me to be. She threw away my long, heavy, brown, wool coat and gave me a bulky, brown-and-white-checked sweater from Yugoslavia. She also gave me a pair of the wildest, tightest pants I ever wore — brown and white striped! Then she grabbed my long red ponytail in one hand and, with a single chop, cut the whole thing off. My frizzy red hair puffed out like a pyramid. Patsy then handed me the mirror and I cried. This was me! I was no longer a timid, miserable, unemployed ballet dancer; I was a wild, pixie, misfit who loved ballet.

Stuttgart, Germany c. 1984. Photo: Armin Schulz

During our second afternoon together, Patsy walked me over to the bookstore in the Schlossplatz and bought several books for me to read and keep. One was Tom Robbin’s Still Life with Woodpecker. The others were every book that Carlos Castaneda had written up until then. This would become the norm for us; Patsy bestowing gifts, paying the bill wherever we went, finding clothes for me to wear, and telling me what to do next. Between Patsy and Castaneda’s Don Juan, I entered a “separate reality” where life took on a special kind of shimmer and started making sense.

Patsy drove an old diesel Mercedes to and from the ballet school. All my life, I was impressed with Patsy’s driving. She wove in and out of traffic with ease and grace. She could stop on the steepest slope while maintaining a deep, philosophical conversation and then gently shift into drive without a sputter. 

After two ballet classes and an afternoon with Patsy, I would trek back to Susie and Mike’s apartment in Tübingen to repeat the journey the next day. Patsy decided that this was way too expensive. She wished I could live with her, but she and her boyfriend had a small apartment and a tumultuous relationship. Patsy introduced me to Armin, one of her best friends who worked at the ballet school. I eventually moved in with Armin and the three of us ate dinner together and consumed massive amounts of wine before Patsy went home to her boyfriend.

Armin was as “into” ballet as we were so most of our conversations revolved around this art form and the “something else” that transforms technique into art. These were fabulous conversations; unlike anything I had experienced before. I eventually landed a job with the Darmstadt Opera Ballet. Patsy drove up from Stuttgart to see all my performances and spend the night in my studio apartment.

Stuttgart, Germany c. 1984. Photo: Armin Schulz

Soon after I moved to Darmstadt, Patsy moved to Paris, where she danced topless at the Moulin Rouge. She might not want me to share this part of her story, but I am so proud of her! It was a respectable, well-paying job and whenever I had time off, I took the train to Paris to visit Patsy. In the afternoons, we took a modern dance class with Peter Goss, one of her dance gurus, who quickly became one of mine too.

While I eventually soured on the world of professional ballet, Patsy soared there. She did not have the body of a professional ballet dancer, but she taught one of the most organic, swiftly moving ballet classes I ever took. Patsy assumed many high positions in the ballet world, including ballet mistress of a company in Yugoslavia and director of the Zaragoza Ballet in Spain. In the last years of her life, she taught company class for the most prestigious ballet companies in Europe.

Toward the end of her too short life, Patsy was my only link to the ballet world, and we continued to discuss the “something else” that many professional ballet dancers (like my young self) suppress in their pursuit of technical perfection. One day, Patsy told me about a class she taught for the ballet company in Barcelona. Now these dancers are technically and physically beyond reproach! You cannot correct them without sounding like an idiot. But Patsy went up to one of the dancers and said, “You have a beautiful arabesque, but you need to put the carrot on top.”

Patsy had to explain to the dancer what she meant, but I understood immediately. She was referring to the frosting “carrot" on top of all the carrot cakes in all the windows of all the bakeries in Europe. They’re colorful, whimsical, sweet designs announcing to the world that this confection is no ordinary cake; this is a carrot cake! Once Patsy explained what she meant, the dancer brightened up immediately and started dancing more like her inimitable self.

The carrot on top of the cake became Patsy’s and my shorthand reference to the “something else” that defined ballet for us. Patsy died in 2022 of metastatic breast cancer, but before she died — and probably with her last ounces of strength — she sent me a 2022 calendar of photos that she had taken. The photo for my birth month, was — you guessed it — a carrot cake!

Photo: Patsy Kuppe Loew