One of my Montreal directors liked to vacation at Club Med. Club Med was a French company that operated hundreds of all-inclusive resorts around the world. The Director would head to one of the Club Med Caribbean resorts at least once a year (sometimes twice) and she always took some of the company dancers with her. There was always a lot of tension in the company in the weeks leading up to her decision as to who was going and who wasn’t. She only took her favorites. It was exactly like being on Santa’s naughty or nice list. Luckily for me, I was always on the nice list. Going to the Caribbean islands with the Director wasn’t a total vacation. We weren’t paid but we did have to do a little work. We were required to do a class every morning on the resort’s stage and then rehearse until lunch. At the end of the week, we presented an hour long evening show that was pasted together from the company’s repertoire. The rest of our time we were free to do whatever we wanted – swim, sunbathe, windsurf, scuba dive, eat, drink, etc. It was fabulous – the best deal that any dancer could ever be offered.
It wasn’t all fun and games in the sun. Company politics still followed us. During one of our Guadeloupe excursions, the Director imposed sanctions on Denise. Denise was required to take class every morning without fail – or she would be fired. First a little background on Denise. She was beautiful – absolutely stunning. Men threw themselves at her feet – and for good reason. She was articulate, bi-lingual, quick witted and funny. She was also a phenomenal dancer. I was told that she was the ideal dancer a few years before I met her – dedicated and hard working. All of that changed the day she was diagnosed with diabetes. From that moment she went into self-destruct mode. Denise partied every single night, rarely arriving home before 3:00 in the morning. She smoked non-stop, she drank like a fish and she never took another dance class – not even pre-show warm-ups. The only reason Denise was still in the company was her beauty and her natural talent.
Deni (as we called her) and I became instant friends. Her wild side countered my shyness perfectly like a yin and yang match. Being the rehearsal mistress of the company, part of my job was to keep Deni in check, which wasn’t always the easiest task. Back in Montreal, if I didn’t see Denise outside of the studio door by the time we finished our morning class, I would call her home. Her low and froggy voice would answer. “Deni – rehearsal.” “Aw, shit,” and the phone would slam down. Some time during the first hour of morning rehearsals, Deni would stride into the room in her fur coat, let the coat slip off her shoulders onto the floor and jump into whatever piece we were rehearsing at the time. The Director tried to get Deni under control. She lectured, she pleaded, she threatened. Deni reacted the same way every time – with boredom and disgust. This time the Director had reached the end of her rope with Deni. This time she meant her threat – Deni was to take the morning class – everyday or – she’d be fired. Deni was my roommate so getting her up was my responsibility. OK – true – I could have left her in the room – but that’s not what you do with a friend. I thought getting Deni up in the morning was going to be an easy thing – wrong. When she was out – she was out. I started off with gently shaking her bed – then harder, then harder. I shouted at the top of my lungs – nothing. I finally grabbed her mattress and tipped it so she rolled out onto the floor. She woke up. Deni made it to her first class in a long while but stopped half way through it and went to sit in the audience area with a cup of coffee. The Director told Deni to get back into the class. “Don’t push it,” Deni growled. By the end of the week, Deni was fired.
Deni wasn’t the only one fired that week. Along with her, the company bon vivant Cory was given his walking papers. Cory wasn’t the most talented of dancers but his infectious humor and hard working attitude made him a favorite among the company dancers. Cory could make any bad situation bearable. When he got fired – everyone was upset – and we wanted revenge. I won’t bore you with all the details of our plotting but let’s just say that all the dancers were in on the plot in some capacity and we had a lot of help from some of the Club Med staff whom we had befriended. The Director was going to attend a concert on the compound. An entire network of lookouts was set up to make sure that we knew where she was at every moment. While the Director was enjoying the concert (with several of the dancers so it wouldn’t look suspicious), I went to her room carrying a bucket. I had a crab that I had caught earlier in the day. Getting into the Director’s room wasn’t an issue. None of the rooms on the compound had locked doors. The only hurtle was to find out what room was hers – which we got from a staff member. As I opened the door, I met up with Cory and one of the Club Med staffers tying a goat to a piece of furniture. They had “borrowed” the goat from a nearby farm. I put my crab under her bed and we left. The next day, Cory and Deni left on an early morning flight while the rest of us stayed for another week’s work. The Director arrived at the morning class angrily sputtering about a goat and a crab in her room. She discovered the goat immediately when she returned to her room. She called one of the staff and they removed it. She didn’t know about the crab for a couple of hours. It seems that its scratching woke her up. She said that she turned on the light and discovered this enormous crab that she shoved into her bathroom with a magazine. Now I can tell you that the crab really wasn’t that big, after all I caught it. Probably palm size. We really came to love that little crustacean. He was a master of disguise. Although the Director could hear him moving about, it took her three days to catch him. The Director was convinced that Cory and Denise did this to her but she was never quite sure and no one would ever tell her who was really the culprit. She continued to bring up this incident for as long as I was in the company. “Do you remember when I found a goat and a crab in my room….?” I would just listen and shake my head in sympathy. Deni died a few years later. She didn’t even reach the age of thirty.