How was the overall mood in your team after you had these bad headlines? I read that there was some hate mail coming in and stuff.
We had a meeting with the entire production team to discuss this, because some of us were really worried about our safety during the shows. The production managers took steps to ensure that we’d be safe during the shows. I remember that my heart had never raced as fast as the first time I was about to skate on the ramp when all this was unfolding. It made me a little nervous, just like skating for the first time. We were all going through it and processing what was happening that week. Eventually, it eased off in all of us after having a huge, excited audience applauding at the end.
However, there is a lot of blood and sexual acts on stage. And Sancta is more of an opera performance than a classic opera. Most opera houses have probably never staged anything similar. What were your first thoughts after reading the script?
Actually, there was no script. We had a creation period that started in March, and it lasted about three months. Flo had lots of ideas for the piece and was the mastermind of this. The first 20 minutes of the opera are the original Sancta Susanna piece, and after that is our own thing. Basically, we all implemented ideas for certain scenes during the creation process. I think there was a point where it was hard to imagine how it would look in the end. We were rehearsing all these little scenes, and a lot of things were naturally taken out and added. But over time, it quickly welded together in its own way and became this organism of collage work. Before we knew it, we were rehearsing it back to back.
How did you get this job?
I’ve known Flo’s work for a while now, and some of the performers and I have mutual friends in the art world. I heard that she was looking for a skater for her next piece. I thought it was freaking cool that they’re doing that. And some of my friends told me to go for it, but I thought to myself, ‘No.’ My work is really demanding. I work as a birth doula in Berlin. Occasionally I do some skate work on the side and manage the skating bowl I built in Berlin with my boyfriend and our friend. I couldn’t see myself committing, because my work was demanding around that time. I would have to leave my work.
Which you did in the end—for a while.
Yeah, I did (laughs). I ended up emailing a video of me skating. I heard back right away and they said, ‘Flo wants to see you Monday at 10:00.’ She and Annina (Machaz)—who plays Jesus—came to my studio. We had a long discussion, just getting to know each other for a couple of hours, then they saw me skating. That’s how it all went down.
