Ballerina

by Edward Stewart

  ‘Thank you.’

  He stared at her. His nose wrinkled. ‘What an absurd thing to say. You know nothing about the role—I haven’t even decided whether to use you or not. And you sit there and thank me.’

  She wanted desperately to say something polite. ‘I mean thank you for considering me.’

  ‘I am considering your physique.’ After a long search he took out another score. ‘Do you play the piano?’

  ‘I never had time to learn.’

  He handed her the score anyway. ‘Anton Arensky—Suite for Two Pianos. The waltz. Last movement.’

  ‘Mr Volmar, I don’t read music.’

  ‘How can a dancer not read music? Music is the floor you walk on.’

  ‘I’ve had solfège. I can tap rhythms and I can sing with movable do. But I can’t read a piano score. I can’t read anything more complicated than a melody.’

  ‘Can you listen?’

  ‘I’m an expert listener.’

  His eyebrows arched. ‘Then listen expertly to this, please.’

  He put a record on the phonograph. The piano music was babbling, busy, smoothly gossipy. There were too many notes. He lifted the needle at the end of the cut, let silence drift through the room.

  ‘Well? What did you hear?’

  ‘I heard a waltz.’

  ‘And did you like it?’

  She had not liked it and she couldn’t believe he liked it either. But she was not going to be goaded into thinking out loud, not with a role at stake. ‘Mr Volmar, you told me you’re choreographing the music. I tried to imagine it as dance.’

  ‘Ah—what a gift. You imagined my choreography.’

  ‘That isn’t what I meant.’

  ‘It’s what you said. You intrigue me, Miss Lang. Show me what you imagined. Don’t be shy. Perhaps I can use it.’

  She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t move.

  ‘Come now. You’ve heard the music; you’ve imagined the choreography. Show me.’

  She got to her feet. ‘Am I partnered?’

  ‘Forget the partner. Do your own variation.’

  He put the record on again. She improvised. She tried to catch what she heard: the cascading inner voices, more meaningful as blur than as music; the thinly pretty melody dressed up as a symphonic beauty; above all the swooping retards, the grandly hesitant rubatos. What she attempted was not parody: the music was dead serious. She tried to exaggerate a little girl’s dream of balletic prettiness.

  He stopped her in the middle of it. ‘Enough.’ His eyes met hers, pricked with light like the tips of scalpels. ‘Do you fancy yourself a lyrical dancer?’

  He hates me, she realized. Absolutely hates me.

  ‘Not especially,’ she said.

  ‘Do you fancy yourself a dancer?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  He considered her one endless moment. ‘Studio 5—eleven-thirty sharp tomorrow.’

  Knowing Volmar was an ogre for promptness, Steph arrived at studio 5, warmed up and ready, at eleven-twenty. Sergio Moritz, one of the older principals, was doing stretches at the barre.

  ‘Good morning,’ he called.

  Steph hung back for one instant of speechless surprise. It was customary at NBT, as at Empire, to save time by rehearsing alternate casts simultaneously, but she hadn’t bothered to look at the cast sheet and it had never occurred to her that Volmar would use Sergio even as a cover. One of Volmar’s charity cases, Sergio had been with the company a quarter century. He was now so hobbled by tendonitis and arthritis, there were days he couldn’t get up on demi-pointe to pirouette. He did character and mime roles, non-dance parts, and from time to time gave a company class.

  Sergio glanced up at her from a plié. ‘The first new Volmar in thirty years,’ he grunted. ‘Do you know anything about it?’

  ‘Only that it’s a waltz.’

  She caught a wince scurrying across his face. He shot up from the plié like a diver surfacing for air. His face was suddenly skeleton-white. Either he’s pinched a nerve, she thought, or he’s very scared of waltzes.

  The studio door swung open and Carla Morris, a soloist with the company, came bounding in. ‘Hi, everyone. My, my—two pianos. Aren’t we fancy!’ Carla was a Minnesota blonde, and she had what was known as the Volmar body. Tall and flexible almost to the point of being overextended, she looked as though she belonged in tennis clothes, not leg warmers. And acted it.

  Her smile was casual and cordial, but Steph sensed Carla sizing her up. One of them would dance the role at the premiere—create it—and the other would cover in case of sickness or injury. The rehearsals were, among other things, elimination tryouts. Steph and Carla were rivals, though for the moment Carla was spreading a cover of smiles and chatter over her steel.

  Wally Collins was the next to arrive. He shot a cheerful round of hellos, got down on the floor to limber his hips. Steph hardly dared hope, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if she got Wally as a partner: he’d make anyone look like a ballerina. The two rehearsal pianists came in and as they began practising Wally made a face at the music. ‘Yech! Sugarplum syrup!’

  On the dot of eleven-thirty Volmar arrived with Tanya Merrill, an ex-ballerina who coached for the company and, it was whispered, had once had an affair with him.

  ‘Good morning. We will listen to the music.’ Volmar signalled the pianists with a nod.

  The waltz finished in a cloudburst of silvery tinkles. Volmar slipped out of his black velvet jacket, slung it over a barre. He rolled up the sleeves of his plaid lumberjack shirt, rubbed his hands together.

  ‘Carla, you will dance there—with Wally.’

  Stephanie’s heart shrivelled to a hard nut.

  ‘Stephanie, you will dance there, with Sergio. Now. imagine, please.’

  He half talked, half demonstrated the choreography. He moved like an ex-dancer, a man who had once been good, still surprisingly graceful in his ability to suggest moves rather than dance them full out.

  Gradually, Steph began to glimpse the kind of ballet Volmar had in mind. It frankly surprised her. She had been brought up to think Marius Volmar as a serious man, a Picasso, a Stravinsky of the dance; and here he was blocking a cutesy piece of fluff.

  A tough piece of fluff, too.

  It was with the lifts that the real trouble came. Sergio couldn’t lift Steph on time or high enough or steady enough, he couldn’t set her down on time, and he was very late, gasping for breath on the second lift. She looked down at his hands on her waist. They were pink and wrinkled and trembling and it made her sorry to see that the nails were manicured.

  By the end of the rehearsal, Volmar had blocked out the first half of the ballet, and Steph’s lifts still didn’t work.

  Carla’s were beautiful.

  twenty-six

  Volmar did not come to the next rehearsal.

  Tanya took over the coaching. She pointed to white masking tape that had been laid in strange geometric shapes on the floor, like cubist voodoo. ‘Be careful not to dance inside these spaces.’

  ‘Why not?’ Carla asked, squirming out of her leg warmers.

  ‘Because that’s where the pianos will be.’

  Steph had never seen pianos with quite so many bends and curlicues. And the spaces were much too large. ‘I thought there were just two pianos,’ she said.

  Tanya gave her an irritable look. ‘There are just two pianos and keep your asses out of the spaces, okay?’

  Steph felt uneasy. It wasn’t just the oddity of the tape marks: there were details Tanya didn’t seem to remember of Volmar’s choreography. She asked Carla, ‘Didn’t Tanya move those chainés? ‘

  Carla shrugged. ‘Who cares?’

  ‘Mr Volmar may care.’

  But that was the puzzling part.

  Performance date loomed nearer. They hadn’t yet learned, let alone seen, a step of the second half of the ballet. Tanya kept coaching them in the first half, adjusting details of speed and spacing and timing.

  And Marius Volmar never
once looked in on a rehearsal.

  One night, waiting in the wings for her entrance in Harlequinade, Steph heard two boys from the corps whispering. ‘And he’s using a real punk-rock band.’

  ‘Volmar doing rock?’

  ‘He’s been rehearsing Jimmy and Andrés for two weeks. They’re not supposed to talk about it, but Jimmy says it’s wild.’

  ‘When’s it premiering?’

  ‘Two weeks.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. Shit, there’s my cue.’

  Steph didn’t want to believe it either. After all, ballet was full of rumours. She checked the backstage call sheet, rehearsal room schedules, the season schedule. The only premiere in two weeks was ‘New Work’—Volmar’s waltz ballet. There wasn’t a trace of a new punk-rock ballet.

  Which ought to have proved there was no such thing. But somehow didn’t.

  ‘You’re dancing the premiere.’

  Steph had bent down to take a gulp from the drinking fountain. She looked up, saw Tanya, and clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Me?’

  ‘You. Congratulations.’

  Steph felt a flicker of doubt at the lack of congratulations in Tanya’s narrow brown eyes. ‘But Volmar hasn’t seen me. He hasn’t even finished the choreography.’

  Tanya gave her an indecipherable look. ‘It’s still definite.’

  Carla was at the barre, warming up with tendus, and Steph could tell she had already heard. Steph slipped into her leg warmers; right hand to the barre, she plié’d.

  ‘Steph, do you mind if I say something about that pirouette going into arabesque?’

  ‘I wish you’d tell me what I’m doing wrong.’

  ‘Your pirouette’s fine. But as you go into arabesque, try not dropping your left shoulder.’

  Carla showed what she meant. Steph tried to copy. On the sixth try the arabesque came out almost right and on the seventh she had it.

  ‘The trouble was my shoulder? I could have sworn it was my foot.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s hard to judge when it’s your own body. Even with the mirror. I wasn’t going to tell you, but it’s such a little thing and now—what’s the point being mean?’

  The day before the stage run-through Volmar finally showed up at rehearsal. Sergio was having trouble helping Steph out of a finger pirouette, and Tanya had just signalled the pianist to take it again from ‘da da dee dum.’ The studio door opened and Volmar slipped in.

  ‘Continue, continue.’ He waved a nonchalant hand. They continued. He strolled to the front of the studio. He watched, eyes bored and almost contemptuous.

  When Steph and Sergio came to the altered lifts, Wally tactfully copied Sergio’s preparation. There was not even a flicker of reaction from Volmar. Either he hadn’t noticed—which struck Steph as hardly likely—or he didn’t want to embarrass Sergio—even less likely—or he simply didn’t give a damn.

  The dancers came to the end of the choreography. They stopped, waited. Volmar let the music dribble on a moment. He lit a cigarette and then clapped for silence.

  ‘That’s fine, girls and boys. Just fine. Thank you.’

  He crossed to the door, a man in a hurry. Steph stopped him. ‘But, Mr Volmar, what else happens?’

  He looked at her oddly. The other dancers clustered near. She realized she was spokesman for the group.

  ‘You’ve only choreographed half the music.’

  ‘The music repeats. Repeat the steps.’

  Steph couldn’t believe she had heard him right. He had stuck her with the worst possible partner, he had wasted Wally as cover, and now he was telling her to improvise.

  ‘But the music doesn’t repeat in the same sequence.’

  Volmar shrugged. ‘So? Change the sequence of steps.’

  Steph could see the panic rise like a blush on Sergio’s throat. He’d never be able to partner her cold through a changed sequence. ‘Shouldn’t we at least run through it?’

  ‘Work it out yourselves,’ Volmar said. ‘You’re dancers.’

  Then he was gone, and the dancers were staring at one another in amazement. Wally whistled slowly. ‘Stage rehearsal tomorrow, premiere the day after, and he wants you to wing half of it? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I’d just as soon cover this one as dance it,’ Carla said. ‘Just as soon.’

  Steph fought back the stirrings of uneasiness. She managed to get her stage make-up on, managed to dress herself in the Giselle-length tutu Volmar had specified. Even stretching the tasks, she finished her warm-up with two gaping minutes left to kill.

  She didn’t dare smoke another cigarette or gobble more honey. She fussed with eye shadow, fussed with her shoe ribbons, kept glancing at the clock. Stage rehearsal was scheduled for three. When the moment came, it was like the breaking of a dam. Tiny nameless terrors, a sense that something was about to go disastrously wrong, came gushing down in a flood.

  It’s only a rehearsal, she told herself. Save your jitters for the performance.

  She went out to the stage. She could feel expectancy buzzing through the house. Off-duty company members, curious to get an advance peek at Volmar’s first ballet in thirty years, clustered in the wings, whispering and jostling. Three rows of the orchestra were filled with spectators—patrons who paid a thousand dollars a year for the privilege of watching what NBT brochures referred to as ‘the act of creation.’

  A scattering of anonymous faces dotted the dimness of the upper balconies. Steph wondered how many of the dance press were out there.

  She excused her way past stagehands, went to the wing where she’d make her entrance. Tiny tendrils of menace stretched from the empty stage. The set was a typical Volmar nothing: dusk-blue cyclorama, two grand pianos tail to tail shaping a single mysterious silhouette against the twilight.

  Steph squinted.

  The stage manager was down on all fours, laying lines on the stage with white tape. She tried to clamp down on a growing nervousness. The pianos were already there, so why the tape? And why five feet behind the pianos?

  And why, mixed in among the dancers she recognized, those two hooligan types in leather? And why were Jimmy and Andrés dressed the same way, leather jackets with flashy chains and dangling hardware? She frowned.

  Sergio came up behind her. ‘Hi, Steph.’

  ‘Hi, Sergio.’

  He looked as though an undertaker had done his make-up, great glops of pancake and blush trying to cover age and exhaustion. They had rehearsed the changed sequence and it hadn’t gone well. They clasped hands and his palm was sweating.

  ‘All right, are we set to go?’ An impatient Volmar stood in the third row of the orchestra, shouting into a mike. Beside him Tanya sat with a note pad open on her lap, ballpoint pen poised.

  ‘All set,’ came the call from backstage.

  ‘Then let’s go. Curtain!’

  The two pianists came onstage. Volmar had made them wear black tie. They went to their separate pianos and fussed with the height of the stools.

  Steph flexed up and down, limbering her toe shoes. Something clanked overhead, making her start. She looked up. A lighting man had dropped a beer can on the steel catwalk four stories above. That was all it took to wipe out her concentration.

  Sergio touched her and whispered, ‘Merde, querida,’ and she realized her music had begun.

  ‘Merde, Sergio.’

  She darted a kiss on his cheek. Something flicked across his face and she wondered if he had developed a tic. Her cue approached: four, three, two ... now.

  She bourrée’d out onstage, leaned against the piano like a teenager infatuated with the pianist, then let the music sweep her to stage front: arabesque, plié, arabesque, plié, turn....

  Trouble, stage right: a totem pole of lights blinded her on the turn. She made a mental note to mention it to the lighting designer.

  Sergio was moving out from the wing. Walking, he still managed to be the danseur noble. They hands touched and he guided her in a pirouette. A line of sweat had seeped through the spine of
his jacket. His shoulder was low, and she had to readjust her centre. His shoulder stayed low, and she wondered if it was hurting him.

  Now came the series of chainés, the little hopping leaps from one foot to the other. Sergio stood to the side, presenting her, then stepped forward to guide her in a turn en arabesque.

  A noise made her head flick to the right, almost knocking Sergio’s arm out of position.

  Leather boys were wheeling electronic equipment out onto the stage, lining up speakers with the white tape marks. They wore guitars slung across their chests like rifles.

  ‘Keep going!’ Volmar shouted. ‘Everyone just keep going!’

  The pianist kept tinkling out their waltz. Steph tried to keep dancing, but she could feel Sergio losing the beat. The leather boys began tuning their instruments and punk rock came blasting through the waltz like bullets through paper.

  Anger flashed through Steph. She lost her count. She came off pointe, dropped her port de bras. Volmar was shouting through cupped hands, but she couldn’t hear. She could see the pianists’ hands working imperturbably, but the waltz was obliterated beneath the blanketing electric shrieks.

  Sergio managed the first lift, got her halfway up for the second and couldn’t make it. He dropped her. She landed on one knee.

  A strobe light began flashing. Overhead, revolving balls of metal glitter scattered pellets of coloured light in a blinding disco snowstorm. Steph couldn’t see or hear or recognize anything. She could feel Sergio beside her, frozen in disbelief.

  Jimmy and Andrés came punk-swaggering out on stage. They circled Steph and Sergio, leering. There was a sudden mugger’s lunge and Steph felt herself yanked away from Sergio and then someone was lifting her, not a ballet lift but a rapist’s lift.

  ‘On the piano!’ Volmar was onstage, shouting above the guitars, thumping a fist on the piano lid. ‘The piano is a car! Throw her across the hood! Make it look rough—Miss Lang, try to look stunned, will you? Dead if you can manage.’

  She lay absolutely still on the piano. The waltz vibrated beneath her. The knee she had fallen on began to throb.