Pigs Trample George Balanchine . . .

When I was cast as Katy, Fembot #1 (in the Kill Oscar trilogy), I found out I would be working with the great John Houseman. He turned out to be a longtime friend of George Balanchine's and had a keen interest in ballet. As a child I studied ballet at George Balanchine's School of American Ballet in NYC.

One of the stories I shared with Mr. Houseman was my experience working with Balanchine in the ballet "Don Quixote". When I was thirteen, several of the young dancers at the School of American Ballet were asked to participate in Balanchine's delightful version of "Don Quixote". I was fortunate to be included in the selection! It turned out that we were to make our New York City Ballet debut as . . . pigs.

Not very glamorous, but it was still a chance to perform with the famous New York City Ballet! We were "choreographed" to stampede across the stage in a scene in Act 3. We had to carefully navigate around the dancer portraying Don Quixote, who would be lying on the ground, directly in our path. The goal was to give the illusion that Don Quixote was being trampled.

"Mr. B" liked to step in and perform the roll of Don Quixote from time to time and unfortunately no one told us this was likely to happen. One night, the "pigs" ran across the stage in usual formation, only to find Don Quixote was not on his mark! Too late we came upon him and inadvertently trampled him for real. Balanchine was furious and raced back to our dressing room as soon as the scene was over. He demanded to know which of us had done the trampling!

Luckily part of our pig costumes were full pig head masks and they turned out to be the perfect disguise. None of us confessed to the unforgivable trampling, we all just sat there and shook in fear!