Hello to the world again and welcome to my blog!

After I have written in my last blog, about my experiences with unacceptable behavior during my time at the ballet academy -being a young adolescent- I now want to write about the unacceptable behavior that I encountered during my time at the high school of arts, being a young adult.

I am aware of the fact that this is a quite heavy and unpleasant topic to read about.
On the other hand though, I consider this topic as very important to write about, because nowadays there is a lot of attention for it and a lot of very necessary willingness to do something about these “small” crimes that are still being carried out all over the world.

About my time at the high school of arts, I remember a lot of situations in which I was confronted with sexual intimidating behavior from especially one teacher.
He always loved to touch the male students almost everywhere during class and he didn’t even hide it or do it discretely.
Most of the time he even joked about it towards the whole class!

I remember this teacher created a choreography for a male trio and he wanted me to be part of it. Of course I was very proud to be in it and to be able to work with him, but soon I started to feel uncomfortable with his very touchy and intimidating behavior.
After quite a long time of thinking and hesitating, I decided to say something about it and after that my part in the trio got only smaller and smaller.

As the other two guys didn’t mind his behavior at all, I was also treated by this teacher as if I was the one that was so difficult and so serious, and so prude, etc.
He was only “joking around and why would I make such a fuzz about it!”
It was a very uncomfortable situation for me and of course it influenced my whole capacity and all my qualities as a dancer.
For instance, I couldn’t concentrate on the choreography anymore and I was always busy with what this teacher was doing and what he might say about me next.                                  Because one thing was quite clear: I was the black sheep.
At a certain point, I even somehow regretted the fact that I showed him my boundaries and that I stood up for myself. At the same time I was also convinced of the fact that I was right and that I did the right thing.

I was barely an adult at that time and I was so clueless that I really needed a long time to understand that this teacher’s behavior was wrong and unacceptable.
And the first thought I had, was that I MYSELF was actually wrong and that I MYSELF interpreted his behavior in the wrong way.
That is very typical for a situation like this and it only shows how vulnerable one is as a dancer and as an artist in general.

Later in my career I also experienced situations like this, in which I was downgraded from first cast to understudy, because I stood up for myself and because I stuck to my gut feelings and said “NO!” It is a very uncomfortable process, but once you have made the first step, there is no return to settling with this unacceptable behavior.

I deliberately wanted to dedicate these last two posts to this topic of unacceptable behavior, in order to share my experiences with you. Who knows it might help to encourage some of you to stand up for yourselves and to show your boundaries!

In the first place I of course hope that you have not experienced situations like this and if so, I hope that you were able to say “NO”!
Many greetings from Berlin and take care of yourselves!