Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  Anna watched Steph stir the honey into the health-food yuck. She didn’t see how a human could eat such bird feed, let alone dance eight hours a day on it.

  ‘We’ll both get offers.’

  ‘That so. Well, Sleeping Beauty, you have a scholarship to the top ballet school in the world. Those people worked with Petipa. Cecchetti. Balanchine. And they’re paying you. I don’t see anyone paying your dear sweet friend to stitch ribbons on a toe shoe.’

  ‘She could have had a scholarship, but she wanted to pay her own way.’

  ‘Luckily.’

  ‘Mom, you’re being unfair. She—’ Steph put down her spoon and began crying.

  ‘Aw, honey, why tie yourself down? I know it’s only a promise—but why? In ballet you travel light or you never make it.’

  Steph turned away from Anna’s kiss. ‘Sometimes you sound so mean. You say you want me to have friends and then you won’t let me.’

  Anna exhaled a long, deep, weary breath. ‘I’ve been through it, honey. I made promises all my life. Sickness and health. For richer, for poorer. I know how it starts. And ends. Now hurry up or you’ll be late for class.’

  Anna scraped the cottage cheese back into its bowl. Kids, she thought. You teach them to read, you teach them to make their beds, you can’t teach them to eat.

  ‘And take your new shoes,’ she called. ‘You got a crack in the pair you’re using. I swear they make those things out of paper nowadays.’

  five

  Anna got to the recital hall a half hour early.

  So did everyone else.

  A mob was pushing past the single ticket-taker, streaming up and down the aisles trying to locate their seats. Anna wedged her way past two gossiping women into row M. She found her seat, settled herself, looked around her.

  The theatre was packed fifteen minutes before curtain. She saw dancers, ex-dancers, dance hopefuls, dance nobodies. You could always spot the nobodies because they dressed for the event like opening night at the Metropolitan Opera. Floor-length gowns at 5 p.m. on some of them.

  Balanchine was there, and Robbins, and Tetley and Tudor and Twyla Tharp, scattered like flecks of gold among chattering parents who didn’t even know who they were. Anna saw Marius Volmar slip into a seat five rows away and a twitch of anxiety tugged at her. Heads turned like a field of wheat in the wind. Nora Kaye and Herbert Ross were negotiating the steeply declined aisle. They made movies nowadays, Anna had heard, and Nora was working her butt off trying to get American Ballet Theatre back in shape.

  The house lights dimmed, hurrying stragglers to their seats. The theatre sank into expectant silence. Anna’s stomach made a knot. The student conductor came into the pit and the curtain rose to good-humoured, tolerant applause. Anna’s hands stayed in her lap, trembling.

  The stage lights came up, and a stageful of children broke into movement.

  These recitals always followed the same pattern. First came the kiddies for openers, six-year-olds cutesying their way through the Stravinsky Happy Birthday or Circus Polka and wearing any critical edge off the audience. After a stageful of bumbling toddlers, anyone who could go on half pointe would look like Melissa Hayden taking a twenty-foot fish dive into Nicholas Magallanes’ arms.

  The kids looked like kids, no port de bras. But the bare cyclorama looked surprisingly professional. So did the neat, simple costumes. I’ll bet the parents pay the cleaning bills, Anna thought.

  She settled back for the agony of waiting.

  Lvovna watched from the wings, and Zhemkuzhnaya, whom she detested, stood watching beside her. They were always surprises in the student recitals. Lvovna saw things she could not possibly see in the studio: she saw who had courage in front of an audience and who did not; she saw who could hold an audience and who could not.

  Now her eyes were fixed on the Bailey girl. Bailey could throw off double fouettés in class but onstage she was freezing up. Because they both had shocks in store, because Zhemkuzhnaya could not help that God had made her a Marxist mediocrity, Lvovna was willing to whisper to her.

  ‘Bailey will teach—nothing more.’

  Evans, who barely trusted herself to pirouette in class, was responding to the applause, taking risks, changing her solo: a triple unsupported pirouette—naughty; but good, very good.

  ‘I think Evans will dance in Stuttgart.’

  Zhemkuzhnaya nodded, and Madame knew these opinions would be repeated as though they were Zhemkuzhnaya’s own.

  Madame squinted. Sanchez, who could hold a balance forever, could not hold the stage. What was this mystery called stage presence; why could it not be taught?

  ‘Luckily Sanchez is beautiful. She will marry.’

  Madame’s eyes were caught by another, Levine, forgetting her port de bras but smiling the only smile onstage. The audience saw nothing else but the smile. Levine could stumble and they would still love her.

  ‘Such a little thing, a smile. And so important. We should teach them to smile in class.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Zhemkuzhnaya said.

  ‘And it’s interesting how they take to the music. For many, this is their first orchestra. But what an orchestra!’

  ‘Students,’ Zhemkuzhnaya said coldly.

  ‘Young and unpaid and on fire with music,’ Madame said. ‘These thirty-two pieces are playing with the joy of ninety. They are a symphony that has not yet fossilized into a union.’

  ‘I do not care to discuss your economic theories.’

  Zhemkuzhnaya turned one way and Madame turned the other. Two questioning, anxious faces were watching the stage. This will be interesting, Madame thought: Christine is lyric and Stephanie has brio and I don’t know if either of them has courage.

  They should not have been in the wings and Madame should have scolded, but she decided instead to chat.

  ‘You are scared, I hope?’ she said pleasantly.

  ‘Scared stiff,’ Stephanie said.

  ‘Good. Body must have proper tension before performance. And you, Christine?’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  Not good. Either she was not telling the truth or she was not a dancer. Nor was Madame pleased by Christine’s appearance. Before performance a dancer’s body was normally glazed with the fine mist of warming up. But Christine’s face was in a sweat. Her body too. Madame could see the blouse of her tutu stuck to her back in clots. This sweat did not come from stretched muscles. It came from stretched nerves.

  ‘Christine, dear, how soon before you go on?’

  There were three numbers to go before Chris’s pas de deux but already her heart had started racing wildly. ‘I’m third from now, Madame.’

  ‘Then there is time. Go fill sink with water. Very cold, otherwise make-up will run. Put face under water. Count ten. Pat face, make-up will not smear. You will feel wonderful.’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  Christine did not appear happy with the idea and it occurred to Madame that she might not obey.

  ‘Stephanie, go help her.’

  The girls went downstairs to the shower room. Steph let the water run till it was ice cold to her fingers. She plugged the sink.

  ‘Dive in.’

  She could see the gulp ride down Chris’s throat and then Chris plunged her head into the water. It was no count ten, but when she came up she looked like a drowned cat, the edges of her hair dark and plastered down.

  ‘I feel like an idiot,’ Chris said.

  ‘You’re afraid and you just don’t know it.’ Steph helped Chris towel her hair dry.

  They got as far as the bottom of the stairway. The allegro from the Bizet symphony came down, cascading and silver, from the stage. Chris stopped short.

  ‘Steph, I—’

  She turned and ran and when she came back Steph could tell she had thrown up; which was odd, since Chris hadn’t eaten anything all day except a mouthful of bee pollen.

  ‘Are my eyelashes still on?’

  ‘On and beautiful. Come on, let’s watch.’ Steph dragged
her up the stairs and they stood in the wings, watching the lightning-fast finale of the Bizet.

  Madame touched Chris’s shoulder. ‘Much better, yes? Happened to me every night in Monte Carlo.’

  The dancers in the Bizet bowed and came streaming offstage. The sweat and exhaustion showed. ‘Very, very nice.’ Madame pushed them back and they returned for second and third bows. Madame cocked an ear to the applause. She was able to detect condescension in the clap of a hand but she detected none now.

  Her boys and girls were good. It was amazing to think that in her own day no one could have danced a Balanchine presto, not even Nijinsky. The technique had not existed. Nowadays, students could do it.

  But is it progress? she wondered.

  The house grew silent again and the orchestra thundered out the opening chords of the Don Quixote pas de deux. That’s a good tempo, Madame thought. She touched the red ruffle on Stephanie’s shoulder.

  ‘Remember, darling. Spanish. All chili powder and olé.’

  Steph tested her pointe, up down, up down, stood braced. Her eyes met her partner’s in the opposite wing. He mouthed a merde. She did not need to count. As she felt the music rushing headlong into her cue she leapt on stage.

  My God, it dawned on her, twelve hundred people are watching!

  Nicky Riveras’ leap was late, but it didn’t matter. His hand touched her waist and it was far firmer than in rehearsal. The audience, the pulsing reality of the orchestra, seemed to drive all hesitation out of him. Suddenly he was partnering.

  Suddenly Steph trusted him.

  She threw herself into balances and turns and there was none of the awkwardness of the studio run-throughs. She went on pointe for her series of hops and there was a sudden silence in the house and then an explosion of applause. It was the first time she had ever heard an audience applaud her dancing.

  They like me, she thought. Twelve hundred people like me!

  The applause went into her blood like adrenalin. Nicky’s hands were around her waist, assisting her soutenu. But she didn’t need the assistance and because she didn’t need it the step was higher and lighter than ever before, with an instant’s weightlessness at the top of the movement that she had never felt before. She drew her right foot, then her left up beneath her, came down lightly in fifth, bourrée’d forward for her pirouette.

  She heard the murmur in the house and felt energy flowing from the audience into her. There was too much energy in her now. It had to be released.

  Without thinking, without effort, a single pirouette came out double.

  For several seconds Anna floated on a sea of uncertainty. She’d never been so afraid in her life. This was it. The moment. She’d staked everything on the next thirty seconds.

  She sat very still, eyes pinned to the girl on stage.

  Steph looked pretty as a Spanish doll in her black skirt and red blouse. Yeah, but could she handle the pirouettes in the variation—and what about that stinking passé balance in the coda? Anna’s fingernails dug into the flesh of her palms.

  Coming out of a turn, Steph arched her wrist and fingers over her head, as thought she were holding castanets. Why didn’t someone tell me to do that when I was dancing Don Q. with Bobby Baylor in ’55? Anna wondered. Her head bobbed, marking the familiar movements: plié, plié, breakaway, pirouette—who was that zombie they’d given her for a partner?

  Nice pirouette.

  Anna sat up straighter. She squinted. Was Steph going up onto full pointe for those pas de bourrée? Most dancers only went to half toe for them.

  And then out of nowhere Steph shot into a double turn that hit Anna like a shaft of sunlight. She wanted to jump up applauding in her seat.

  And another double turn!

  And another!

  Anna didn’t believe it. Where did the girl get the speed from? Anna saw it happening in front of her but she didn’t believe it. No preparation—just blinding speed.

  She sensed a fever of whispers sweeping the audience. The lump of fear in her chest began going down.

  She hated to take her eyes off the stage, but she couldn’t resist peering around to see how the audience was taking it. Her eyes groped through the darkness to Marius Volmar’s seat.

  Of all the cheek, Marius Volmar was thinking; that girl is changing the choreography!

  Eighteen years ago Lvovna had asked him to simplify the Don Q. pas de deux for two of her ‘very talented students’. And now this girl was throwing out the Volmar simplifications, restoring Petipa’s original double pirouettes and fouetté combinations and a dozen other details.

  Fascinated, Volmar leaned forward in his seat.

  The girl came bourrée'ing forward, a wonderful springiness to the steps. She whipped into a double turn that was not even in the original. The footlights caught her blonde hair and for one emerald instant he saw the colour of her eyes. She held one spectacularly long balance and he jotted rapidly in his programme: excellent legs; fluidity; extremely strong; places weight well; adjusts to partner’s deficiencies.

  The adjustment had to be instinctive, not conscious, and it meant she was a professional.

  Volmar felt strangely exhilarated watching her. He couldn’t be angry at such a dancer. Not even when she held a balance and instead of bringing her arms into fourth position sharp and Spanish, she brought them in slowly, romantically.

  It was not the choreography at all. But the balance was astonishing and there was something true and appropriate about the movement. The music was not sharp, not Spanish: it was pure Minkus drivel, the same throbbing strings and harp that the composer used for the kingdom of the shades in Bayadère. The girl was dancing the music, and she had instinctively altered the one movement that flatly contradicted it.

  In very large capitals Volmar scrawled across his programme VERY MUSICAL.

  He drew two lines under the words.

  Chris stood listening to the applause. Steph’s pas de deux had been a success. Chris was relieved. Now she had only herself to worry about.

  She watched Steph and Nicky Riveras take their bows, and then Nicky swept past her, ignoring her, as though he were a star and the applause had been all for him.

  Steph whispered, ‘Merde’, and hugged her. There was another kind of applause and Chris knew the conductor had come back to the pit. She felt a wave of unfriendliness sweep in from the dark house. She knew she had no one out there.

  At first she had taken it philosophically that her parents hadn’t come to the recital. After all, as they explained, her brother’s graduation was just as important. But suddenly she wished she had a pair of hands applauding for her.

  Just one pair.

  The orchestra began the introduction to the Snow pas de deux from Nutcracker. The music had always seemed soft and unhurried as snowflakes but now it seemed a torrent of icicles.

  Eight counts before cue Chris felt a savage need to turn and run from the stage. But Lvovna was beside her, gentle and nudging.

  ‘Allez, mon petit.’

  There was a push and she sprang, landing on stage with a muffled thud. Something felt undefinably wrong. She was aware of a silence in the audience that drowned out the music.

  It would be different silence, she thought, if I had someone out there. Just one person rooting for me.

  Her partner was nervous. As he was lifting her his hands slipped and she had to touch down very lightly to keep from looking as though he’d dropped her. Suddenly she overshot a piqué—a stiff-legged step directly onto half toe—and almost lost her balance.

  She stopped dead in her tracks. Panic struck her across the chest. For a terrifying instant she lost her count. Her centre of gravity rose into her throat and she couldn’t adjust. She managed her développé but her leg wasn’t nearly as straight or slow or high as she wanted.

  The music wasn’t giving her time.

  She had three pirouettes coming up and she had to step into arabesque but the music was rushing her. Her hand went up and her partner’s fist closed a
round her finger to guide her in the finger pirouette.

  How damp and cold his hand is, she thought.

  She brought her leg up and around for momentum to make the turn but she didn’t have time to pull in. Her knee bumped into her partner. Suddenly there was no momentum, no movement, no memory of what next.

  Her back was to the audience and humiliation paralyzed her. She stood alone, stranded in the moment, the music by-passing her, and then she felt a tug and her partner was pulling her into penché arabesque.

  He was pulling a corpse and the corpse was Christine Avery and she didn’t know how to come to life again.

  Applause was polite, nothing more.

  Chris and her partner took one curtain call and then she made her way miserably into the wings. She was glad her parents hadn’t been able to come, glad they hadn’t seen her disgrace. Her eyes and forehead were burning with anger and failure and hopelessness.

  Steph had seen. ‘Chris,’ she said softly. ‘It could have happened to anyone.’ She reached to wipe Chris’s face with the clean edge of a tissue.

  ‘It was my fault,’ Chris said tonelessly. ‘I’m not a dancer.’

  A panic rose in Steph. What’s going to happen to Chris? she wondered. Chris was injured and she didn’t know how to pick herself up or keep going.

  ‘You are a dancer. One of the best.’

  ‘I’m good in class,’ Chris said. ‘You’re good in class and you’re good onstage too. That’s the difference between us.’

  Steph looked at the huge wounded eyes. The idea took hold of her that it was her fault for having danced first. Chris had been standing there watching and everything she should have been saving for herself she had used up being scared for Steph.

  I’ve got to bring her back, Steph realized. I owe it to her.

  ‘Shower and change and we’ll talk, okay?’ Steph said.

  Chris forced a smile and nodded and went down the stairs to the dressing room.