Digging Deep Into Auspicious Coincidences

By Karl Baumann

Karl Baumann defied all odds when he became an artist with Cirque du Soleil.

 

With no background in the circus arts his chances were slim to land such a high-flying job.

 

In Part I of his book, we follow Baumann's impossible journey starting with his modest  beginnings in Salzburg, Austria, uncovering a path to the big stage.

 

In Part II Baumann takes us behind the scenes, discussing his favorite subject: The Creative Process. This concludes with a Course in Creative Movement.

 

Karl Baumann's writing is spiritual, inspirational, and educational. It revolves around a concept used in Tibetan Buddhism called Tendrel. Tendrel, or Auspicious 

 

Coincidence, underlies the chance meetings that take us to places unimaginable.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karl Baumann
• Release date: Dec 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215201008

Book preview

Editor’s Preface

My friendship and collaboration with Karl Baumann began in the autumn of 2018 when we became part of the final cohort of the Theatre: Contemporary Performance MFA program at Naropa University. This unique education afforded us profound experiences of ensemble devising process, contemplative Buddhist practice, and somatic body and voice work.

During and after our Naropa years, I’ve had the privilege of co-creating new work with Karl on several occasions and even taking one of our shows abroad for performance in Milan. These endeavors have been nothing short of life changing for me. I can personally attest to this wonderful artist and educator’s generous, innovative, and endlessly energetic character both in the studio and on the stage.

At the time I met Karl, he had already worked the better part of three decades as a professional performer of one kind or another. Beginning his artistic education in his Austrian home in the early ‘80s, he later moved to the U.S. on an invitation to join the renowned Julliard School of Dance. A brief but incredibly productive period with MOMIX dance company followed, and from there he catapulted into a prodigious career with then-nascent Cirque du Soleil.

In reading the first part of Digging Deep, you’ll discover not only a fascinating biographical account of one man’s journey through the late post-modern dance and entertainment world, you’ll likewise encounter a raft of personal insight and growth elucidating the many distinct anecdotes and adventures. The unexamined life is not worth living, wrote Socrates two and a half millennia ago. This memoir bears this principle out in style. It offers us a window on just how much can be discovered in the course of six decades on this complex, challenging, and ever-changing planet. The sort of auspicious coincidences that Karl draws to conscious awareness as the cairns that shape his career and mark the turns in his trail may, in fact, be the underpinnings of all our lives. Who’s to say that our carefully laid plans for relationships, careers, even the locations where we invest our time are really what make us who we are? Perhaps it is, as Karl finds in his own comprehensive self-reflection, far more a matter of benevolent chance than of our own design.

Certainly the Tibetan Buddhist lineage from which Karl draws the term Tendrel, would assert this. Indeed, the idea is entrenched within many schools of Eastern wisdom. Yet, even looking to the Western models, we find agreement. Tendrel, it seems, is everywhere – from Sigmund Freud’s famous assertion, There are no accidents, to quantum entanglement’s avowal that particles once in contact remain in relationship no matter the distance between them.

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In reflecting on Part II of the book, which offers the reader a course in creative movement, I can only say that you are in for a treat. What’s included here are many of the exercises Karl originally introduced to up-and-coming Cirque performers or was taught himself under the direction of greats like the late Franco Dragone.

Provided alongside each exercise are musical track recommendations. I encourage you to give these a listen both in their suggested movement context and as a brilliant compilation in their own right. Before embarking on his far-reaching dance and circus career, Karl studied classical guitar. This fact rarely escapes inclusion in his work – many of our devised shows, for example, include his original scoring – and it is yet another aspect to enjoy and celebrate in entering his world via this memoir and guidebook.

What Digging Deep adds to the ongoing dialogue on creative process is a master performer’s open-hearted technique and personal example of how to embrace chance in one’s work and broader life. The process of editing this publication was one of drawing out Karl’s many fabulous stories, both personal and professional. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this account of a life tuned to auspicious coincidence as much as I have. As Karl is wont to remind me when novel but not immediately applicable ideas pop to mind in the studio, nothing is ever lost. Whatever value you gain reading this memoir and its accompanying course for creative movement may impact you well beyond your first take. I hope you’ll remain open to being surprised. I hope you’ll make room, as Karl so marvelously does, for auspicious coincidence in your own life.

– Selena Milewski, October 2022

P A R T  I

L I F E

Squiggle with solid fill

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INTRODUCTION

The performer’s journey is unpredictable. It is risky and you never know which direction the wind will carry your soul. It is a lifetime of adventures filled with treasures and memories and resulting in a never-ending spiritual expansion.

From my early years studying music in Salzburg, Austria and dance at The Juilliard School to performing with MOMIX dance company and later co-creating and performing in five Cirque du Soleil productions, my performance career has been a prosperous one. I was fortunate to learn from many great teachers and to draw inspiration from many directors and choreographers.

In retrospect, there seem to be many random events that took me from one adventure to another, causing me to wonder whether life is just a series of coincidences. Some of these events were seemingly insignificant, like getting a call from a person I was just thinking about, meeting a friend in a bookstore I had not seen for a long time, or having a parking spot open up just when I thought I’d never find one. Others were so big I had no choice but to radically alter my course, like the weekend workshop in Austria that paved my way to Juilliard, or the chance meeting with Franco Dragone while I happened to be working with MOMIX in Montreal. I paid little attention to these happenings as they occurred. No matter how big or small the event, each one now shows me that being at the right place at the right time can change my life.

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1. ROUTE 91 HARVEST MUSIC FESTIVAL

"Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back,

you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time"

—Dalai Lama

Mandala outline

I performed my last big top show with Cirque du Soleil in the summer of 2010. I played a clown role in a production called Kooza in Seattle. After Kooza, I made minor commercial appearances with the company but, more significantly, I taught movement workshops to other Cirque du Soleil performers. When my Cirque life slowed down, I remained in Las Vegas, the company’s most prominent headquarters. Cirque du Soleil had multiple productions in town and since I had many friends there, it seemed like a logical choice to make this my permanent residence. To stay in shape, I practiced yoga and enjoyed ballet classes at the Nevada Ballet School. I went back to college and received my BFA in Dance from St. Mary’s College of California. The program, called LEAP (Liberal Education for Arts Professionals), was designed to give professional dancers the chance to receive a higher education. Together with other career dancers. I took a combination of online and brick-and-mortar classes in a Las Vegas location.

...

On October 1, 2017, I took a stagehand gig for the country music festival, Route 91 Harvest, which turned out to be the saddest experience of my life. A month earlier, I’d taken a road trip to Sedona and as I was leaving town, I saw a sign advertising a place called Center for the New Age and thought it might be a good idea to stop in for a psychic reading. Once inside the center, I was asked to look through a folder to choose my psychic. It was a simple white binder with photographs and bios of the different psychics available. I felt almost as if I were reading an illustrated menu at a restaurant. I felt particularly drawn to a psychic named Veronica who later described herself as an empath. A person who can tune into the emotional experience of another person. Veronica had a natural beauty about her and a soft, gentle voice that felt calming and empowering at the same time. The reading took place in a small, simply furnished room upstairs that had a couch and a couple of chairs. My child, Hyazinth, was with me during the session and shared my feeling that the reading was genuine and authentic.

Veronica let me know that no matter what she told me, the choices were mine to make. She did not want to influence my future, only to share with me what she saw looking into my emotional body.

In addition to telling me that I was claircognizant and that I had some potential to be a healer and empath myself, she also mentioned that if I stayed on my current path, my future might not be a bright one. What came out of this meeting was that I should not hold onto my past life as a performer with Cirque, but rather look into teaching and enjoy my good memories. When I heard the empath’s message, a wave of relief washed over me that woke me up and made me feel at ease. Veronica made me aware that I was stuck in the past—a past I could be proud of, and one that I could remember at any time without having to cling to it. It was a past that needed to be honored but could no longer be repeated. Before I left, she suggested I read The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins.

Not long after this trip, I saw a poster next to one of the dance studios at the Academy of Nevada Ballet Theatre that said, Free circus performance in the desert, October 1. I put it on my calendar, intrigued by the idea of a circus performance in the middle of nowhere, but when the day arrived, I made the decision to take the stagehand job for Route 91 instead of seeing the circus.

That day I mostly helped load the bands’ gear on and offstage. There is always a lot of waiting around involved in this kind of job, but I got to see the performers up close and had a great view of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, its sheer, glossy exterior glimmering in the sunlight. It was a long day that stretched on into the night. Whenever I had a free moment, I practiced a walking meditation backstage. Nobody knew what I was doing since I looked like everybody else who was walking around while they waited for their next cue.

I had learned this meditation a month earlier during a weekend retreat at Deer Park, a Buddhist monastery in California founded by Thich Nhat Hanh. The meditation is simple. With the first step, one takes a breath in and says to oneself, I have arrived. With the second step and exhalation, I am home. One can also create personalized variations. For example, to accommodate a faster walking pace, one can take one inbreath every five steps. In this variation, one matches each step with a word: I-have-arrived-arrived-arrived, and on one long outbreath, seven steps synchronized to I-am-home-home-home-home-home.

Alternating with the walking mediation, I added a mantra I’d learned from a yogi in Sedona who called himself Swamy G. and said that he was a student of Yogi Gupta. Swamy G. called the recitation the Mantra for Purification. Its Sanskrit text reads: Om Apavitrah Pavitro Vā Sarvā-vasthām Gato’pi Vā Yah Smaret-pund arīkāksam Sa Bāhyābhyantara Śhuchih. In English: May we, whether pure or impure, in all situations and circumstances, achieve both inner and outer purity by remembering the divine name of the lotus-eyed all-pervading Divinity.

Reciting this mantra is supposed to neutralize all negative vibrations and replace them with positive ones. When I asked Swamy G. if there were other teachers or sources, I could contact to learn more about the mantra’s origin, he said, It will find you, when you say the mantra.

Of course, I had no idea what was about to happen later that evening but, in retrospect, signposts were present. Another stagehand I worked with that night talked my ear off about how his way was the right way to do things. I walked away from him since I felt he was unsafe to work with. Within minutes, he got injured and was sent to the emergency room to be treated for a dislocated shoulder. He had no idea what a blessing this injury would turn out to be.

After offloading the equipment for the singer Jake Owen, Jason Aldean took the stage. I remember receiving a guitar pick from one of Jake Owen’s technical staff to thank me for my work. During Aldean’s set, I took a walk far behind the stage to perform the mantra meditation and suddenly heard what sounded like firecrackers. I walked toward the noise to see what was going on. There were no firecrackers and I was not sure what was happening until the lights went out onstage. I thought perhaps there was some shooting going on outside the event but had no idea that somebody was shooting at us. Entering an almost dreamlike state, I heard a voice inside me say that it was time to leave. I walked out the back gate more or less alone. My only thought was that I needed to walk in the opposite direction of the popping sounds. The usual procedure in an emergency was to meet next to the stage, but my instinct told me to do otherwise. A coworker and fellow circus performer ended up with a permanent bullet in his hip by running in front of the stage during these crucial moments.

Once outside the venue, I saw some police officers ducking behind their car, but they did not tell me what was going on and probably had no idea what was about to unfold. I kept walking past them and on down the road until a woman pulled up next to me. There were no other cars behind her. She asked me if I wanted to get in. She was shaking and said something like, They are shooting at us. She gave me a ride to my car, which was parked some distance from the festival lot. I was not sure if I should hide behind it or get in. In the end it felt safer to get in my car and drive away. I stepped hard on the gas, driving down the dirt road to get out. The Mantra of Purification played through my car stereo as I drove off. For a long time afterwards, I could not listen to this piece without being reminded of this horrific day. I was behind three other cars that left the parking lot when I saw the first ambulance driving in. Although I was not aware what was really happening at the time, I was shaken up and went to a friend’s house to see if there was anything on television. Eventually I realized how lucky I was to be alive. I’m not sure if the walking meditation or the mantra helped, but, as it turned out, I’d walked out of the event with just enough time not to be physically affected. It seemed as if I was carried out by an invisible force and, just like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton unknowingly escaping dangerous situations, I walked away unharmed. I was still in shock and cried for a long time after the event. If only I’d gone to see the circus in the dessert instead. I found out later that the first shots fired were in the direction I’d been walking. The shooter was aiming at a large fuel tank that held gasoline for the nearby airport and he must have shot right over my head. Lucky for me these kinds of tanks are bulletproof.

The mass-shooting event told me that it was time to go back to my calling and find a way to serve the performance community as a teacher and creator.

It seems that messages come in threes. The first gentle one came from the empath. The second, from the advertisement for the circus show in the desert. The third and final message came in the form of a mass shooting—a sign so intense that it finally got me on the right track.

After some therapy for PTSD and a low-paying single-season stint as a ski instructor, I enrolled in the MFA program at Naropa University. I had read the book Meditation in Action by the Tibetan Buddhist leader Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche thirty years earlier and was thrilled to be able to study at the university he’d co-founded. After two years of intense study, creative exploration and some major spiritual growth, I received my MFA degree in Theater: Contemporary Performance in the spring of 2020. The COVID-19 virus had hit, the world was at a standstill, and Cirque du Soleil filed for bankruptcy. Nevertheless, it was a good time to write.

Why am I writing this? I believe life’s journey is all about listening and being open enough to follow one’s intuition. Maybe the life of an artist is about seeing and discovering the world through the intelligence of the heart and the lens of the soul. Working hard is a given, but without meeting the right people along the way, we have nothing in life.

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2. LIFE AS A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

The future depends on what you do today.

—Mahatama Gandhi

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Where does life really begin? At birth, before birth, with one’s parents, in making friends? Is life like a tree as