That night, after a brief ballet class, Therese drove me to a restaurant to meet two men who had trained with her in Paris. They were now dancing in St Petersburg and I was just utterly entranced. Young people from St Petersburg are some of the most fashionable and cultured in the East, and I instantly fell for their cultivated air of sophistication. Until then my romantic liaisons had been restricted to guilty encounters behind the railway lines with the older boys from the college, who occasionally saw my developing figure as something to covet. But this was something very different. I was told by one of the men that Therese had described me to them as her ‘star pupil’. They asked if I had applied to a Russian academy yet, and I told them I had not.
‘Therese,’ one of them said. ‘People will look upon you in a highly favourable light if one of your pupils, in your first year of teaching, is accepted into a Russian academy.’
This remark seemed to catch something in Therese and after that night, she began to train me to be accepted into the Vaganova, the most prestigious ballet school in Russia; even the world. This became her purpose in life, and I think she gave it everything she had. In Russia, ballet is a way of life, and normally girls are accepted into the academy as young as ten. But it would be possible, we soon learnt, for me to gain entry there to qualify for a ten month certificate as a foreign student. The prestige it would bestow on me, and upon her as my tutor, would be incredible. It would allow me the opportunity to go on and dance anywhere in the world. It seemed that Therese and I were now bound on a journey together.
My increased focus on dance gave Bruna new ammunition, and life at home became more difficult. Inessa was not quite the ally I had hoped she would be, and we were rarely on the same page. I knew that to get out of this situation I had to leave Donetsk the moment I could, and Therese was my ticket out.
Fortunately, my father supported this new venture wholeheartedly and paid for me to attend summer schools, which he knew would give me an edge over the other girls. These summer schools were wonderful places to me – whole buildings dedicated to teaching young people to express their creative side. It was an eye-opener to know that other people shared my passion; even if they often found pleasure where I found duty. I could not help but view the whole affair through slightly detached, ironic eyes, but I also discovered intriguing new parts of myself.
Yet something always held me back from embracing happiness. Experience had taught me that happiness was a delusional state. I must have constantly looked coiled, haunted. I sometimes wonder why no-one ever questioned why such a young girl was so reticent. I learnt that sentiments were not ordered as ideally as culture would let us know; people dedicated time primarily to their own concerns and welfare, with little time to look out for others. My resignation to this belief led me to find other people pretty unsavoury.
As my body began to develop, some of the boys at the school started to take an interest in me. Though I had initially felt pleasantly surprised, the sensation was to be short-lived.
One in particular, a tall and muscular boy from the city with a quizzical smile, started to pass me notes during quiet moments in class. I didn’t dare tell anyone else about these notes. The contents of them were by turns flattering and, it had to be said, a little frightening. After a few weeks, I started to write him the odd note back, more out of boredom and slight curiosity than anything else. I hadn’t yet ever felt romantically inclined, but in a moment of weakness, I agreed to meet him in a quiet place behind the log cabins after school.
When he arrived, there was an urgency about him that seemed to suggest I had promised something that I couldn’t remember doing. For a while we sat and talked, and it felt good that someone was interested in aspects of my life that I felt were so mundane. Then he wanted to kiss me. At first I resisted, but gradually I began to relax. Then the moment came when he started to touch me. I felt the tension in me rise, and then to my horror, I began to wet myself.
‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘I’m going to be late.’
‘Where are you going?’ he said. Just then, the wet patch on my trousers became visible and he began to laugh. On my way back to the dormitory I couldn’t find my key, and in that awful moment a group of girls saw the wet patch on my clothes and began to openly laugh at me. I’d never felt so ashamed.
At about sixteen, Therese and my father agreed that I had won enough local awards to start applying to the Russian schools. Though the audition itself would not cost, the flights to St Petersburg most certainly would. For the first time, I had a goal on the horizon. I wanted desperately to escape this stifling town for the excitement of St Petersburg, and the elegant streets of Ulitsa Rossi, which housed the Vaganova Academy.
Eventually, I had to hear Bruna’s thoughts on the matter. On one occasion, she snapped down the knife she’d been using and said, ‘Yelena, you are too ugly and fat to be a ballerina. What makes you think you are so special?’ Something shifted in her face as she said it, as if she had wanted to unload this thought for a while. I left the room, but Bruna was not to know that I went straight upstairs and cried. That evening, the razor blade came out again, the shock of the vivid red and the blessed sense of calm returned. I pulled the pillow hard around my face, desperate to not leak a single sound. Deep down I was terrified that she was right. On the internet, Therese had showed me videos of girls who had been accepted there. Their bodies had been so beautiful, flexible and disciplined. However many classes I undertook, and however much practice I did, I had still never been a member of a ballet school, and here I was applying to the best one.
After school, alone in my bedroom I would sometimes strip off and inspect my body in the full-length mirror. It gave me a curious sensation. For years I hadn’t done anything to earn the body of a ballerina and yet, if what the other girls were saying was true, I had one. Yes, I still badly wanted to reduce the swell of my stomach and the weight at the top of my thighs. But I had at least got my mothers’ neck, expressive eyes and long legs. Looking in the mirror it occurred to me then that this body was simply on loan to me for a few years, and I had to fight with every ounce of strength I had not to loathe it. I knew I had to learn to see it as an instrument. A lump of rock that I needed to chip away at in order to make the sculpture required. And yet this increasingly practical attitude to my body was very different to the way I saw myself, as a person. I felt that my Mum had abandoned me because I wasn’t good enough, and that perhaps Bruna was the only one unafraid to tell me that. She simply treated me as I deserved. I was waging a considered war on my body, but a far more vicious war on my mind. Bruna was a factor I had to constantly consider. The blood letting helped, but then I started to live in fear that she might discover that too, and send me away to some asylum.
During practice, my determination manifested itself by refusing to leave the barre until I felt I had got it exactly right. At times I became frustrated with Therese because I felt she was too gentle, too timid with me. I knew that when I auditioned, at any moment I could be tapped on the shoulder, and have to leave the room instantly. The other girls would know what to be thinking of second by second, and yet I would not. As I strove to better myself, Bruna’s voice became part of an internal monologue, taunting me. Often it would just laugh, the laugh ringing around my head for long into the next exercise. But I was damned if I was going to give into it. I watched every morsel that entered my mouth, and I practiced every moment that God sent. My feet sang with pain at the end of the day when I finally took to my bed. But I didn’t have a choice, I had to escape that life. After a few months, Therese started to tell me that she thought I was doing well. And what was more, she felt I had a good chance of getting in.
The only way to get an audition at the academy was to send a tape of myself dancing. Of course, I made Therese tape me six or seven times before we finally made one that I felt was good enough. We eventually sent the tape off and one day after school I had a letter from the Vaganova inviting me to audition with them. My father was delighted,
and not a little surprised, and he booked flights to St Petersburg for Therese and me.
On the flight over, I was barely able to speak. Therese tried to remember exactly what the audition would comprise. I would undertake a usual session at the barre along with all the other candidates, followed by some centre work. I must not allow myself to be distracted by the other girls, she said, however good they were. Although I had walked through this process in my mind many times, I had no idea how little mental preparation can replace the education of experience.
St Petersburg was bustling and overwhelming as Therese and I tried to find our way with our little bags. I felt awed by the austere buildings, their windows set high above the ground by stone pillars. Each seemed imbued with centuries of sacrifice and pain and yet around us young people nonchalantly chewed on fries and snapped one another on cameras.
The Vaganova was just off the manic Nevsky Prospekt, where screened Pepsi adverts sat opposite ancient palaces. It encompassed one long street, which stretched out just behind the compact majesty of the Pushkin Theatre. The academy filled the buildings on both sides of the street, which were painted in a majestic but slightly queasy shade of yellow. Inside, the halls of the academy were grand, but disarmingly blank. Despite the glorious chandeliers that hung from the ceilings, the building itself was filled with a curious, expectant silence. As I waited for my audition, I saw around me mums fussing over their daughters as they waited too. Although I felt fortunate to have Therese at my side, at that point I would have done anything to have had my mother with me. The academy had an aura that was so overwhelming, but my Mum, I knew, would have somehow made it all seem like an adventure.
Therese told me that the panel look at the physique of the applicants’ parents as well, needing to see that they are slim and athletic, to ensure that their offspring will develop appropriately. While the mothers corrected their daughters’ hair and drilled them with instructions, Therese looked vacantly at the ceiling, as if she had suddenly regressed to being a child. I suddenly felt very small, in my cheap Ukrainian gym clothes, and I wondered if Bruna had been right after all.
Therese promised she would meet me in the hall outside as soon as the audition had finished. As she left my side I hoped the next time she saw my face, it contained pride rather than shame.
I was part of a group of seven girls that were shown around the academy before the interview by the director. We were then given a five minute break before the auditions started, and in that time I shut myself in the toilet and tried to calm my nerves. In those desperate, jagged moments I told myself that this was my only option, my only chance. I simply had to make it good. There would be no-one to comfort me if I messed up, and no-one to blame but myself. I imagined how I would feel if I danced well and was accepted. It was too painful to imagine the alternative.
A few minutes later we were led upstairs into a great, high ceilinged hall. I saw that a black and white portrait of Nijinksy was looking over us. As I stepped into the room, I felt that my every footstep was clumsy. From watching videos with Therese I knew what the protocol would be – we would simply dance a usual class that the director at some point would come along and observe. The other girls seemed so much more assured than I at this point, and I wondered how many of them had already walked these historic floors. We each found a place at the barre. The door closed with a great bang, and then six members of staff, some carrying clipboards, came in and stood at the other end of the room. None of them smiled, they merely raised their heads expectantly. The girls consulted nervously with one another and looked to their feet, trying to find their first position. The maestro took to the piano in the corner of the room and one of the people, evidently the ballet mistress, ordered us to prepare, in brisk Russian.
The music began, and to my horror I felt suddenly overwhelmed by the turn of events. I missed the first step. Bruna’s laughter returned to me. Not now, I told myself. I felt the ballet mistresses’ eyes upon me, but a moment later I sensed that her attention had moved on. I could see the panel conferring with one another out of the corner of my eye, and then one of them motioned to the mistress. She ran over to the maestro, his music suddenly stopping before he began the piece again. It was only then that I saw, from the expressions on the other girls’ faces, that many of the others had fallen behind too. I was relieved beyond words to see that the music had not stopped just because of me.
From practicing, I was used to sweating a great deal at the barre, but today I could already feel it pouring out of me and I had barely begun. I implored my mind to catch and then follow each instruction, to be agile enough to also show grace and flexibility in every move. As the music began again the mistress did not show us the whole moves, but merely suggested them with a flick of her hand. As we progressed through the pliés and the slow tendus I saw the mistress pacing around the room. Occasionally she would stop, and touch a girl gently on the shoulder, and they would scuttle out of the room. I focused on staying on top of the music, and straining to hear every word that was said. A few minutes later I sensed the mistress at my shoulder, and my body tensed as she leaned in. I could smell her expensive perfume. I closed my eyes for a moment, and when they opened she had passed me by. I had not yet been discounted, and I felt determined to carry on.
After a while the mistress motioned for us to leave the barre and move into the centre. I heard the panel mutter amongst themselves. Many of the dancers did not even look at one another as they prepared to start again. As I began to dance, I felt my body relax, and to my surprise I began to dance fluidly. My body became a little freer. I attacked my pirouettes, and they seemed crisp and confident. My mind had been sharpened by years of practice, and as the nerves faded my movements were as sharp as they had ever been. Once or twice I saw the mistress tap another girl on the shoulder. Some already seemed resigned to this, and almost relieved to finally bow out of the room. As the session began to draw to a close I knew that they would be looking for me to show endurance, creativity, grace under pressure. Yet I felt something tighten inside of me that wouldn’t release just when I needed it to. I felt their eyes scour down my back for telltale signs of restraint. I knew that I would need to display great poise during my big jumps as the class ended, and I desperately hoped that my body would not let me down. From one corner of the room, one by one we followed the music and in the final grand jeté I felt myself just reach the height required. During these routines I even started to put in little flourishes and expressions that Therese had always told me looked good. When the music finally faded, I realised my body was screaming out in pain. I had never felt more emotionally or physically exhausted in my life.
‘Thank you,’ the director said. ‘Those of you that are still here have danced well. We will let you know our decision in due course.’
The flight home was unbearable. I was terrified that I would return back to instantly find a letter to say that it had all been in vain.
I waited, day after day checking the post, but there was nothing. Then, finally I came home from school to find Bruna waiting on the doorstep. I looked at her, and tried to read her expression, but it was dead. ‘You didn’t get in,’ she said. I took the letter from her, my blurred eyes looking down to see the six or seven lines printed on it. ‘Of course you didn’t get in,’ she said, and then she swept past me, laughing.
With love from,
Yelena
Dear Noah
For that next year life in Donetsk became an endurance test and I am still unsure exactly how I survived it. Therese was offered a job as a choreographer in England, which she immediately accepted. I had no option but to carry on training by myself, in the hope that I would be able to secure a second interview the following year. I knew that there were other places my dancing could have taken me, but I had had my sights set on the Vaganova. Getting in would teach me that I was capable of something special; that all the extra effort I had put in had been worthwhile. It would prove that Bruna was wrong. It would show my fat
her that I had achieved something special, given all the investment he had put in. I also would be achieving something that I knew my mother would have been very proud of. This was to be my time in the wilderness, and I know you are aware of how difficult and yet necessary that time is.
In your last letter you asked me how I could have felt gratitude towards my father, despite his support, given that he didn’t confront Bruna. I can see that when explaining the intricacies of how another family works it is often impossible to justify them. The truth is that only now do I see how weak and scared my father was.
For a few months I carried on with my dancing and schoolwork, and I tried to fight the bitterness festering inside me. Every day I would go to school and curse the ride there, the people around me, the mental prison that I felt trapped inside. I started to feel like I was suffocating, and worse that my moment had passed. That year taught me self-discipline, how to endure, and it gave me an academic fall back position. Those qualifications also started to prove that I was not as useless as Bruna said I was, and that gave me some comfort. The qualifications seemed to signify that in time I inevitably would leave this town. In moments we were somehow alone together, Bruna would tell me that given my father’s effort I should feel ashamed for not having achieved even better grades. By then I had adopted a dismissive demeanour to her face, but later on that night I would often need to let off some blood just to get through the darkness. A rot was starting to creep over me, and I didn’t know how it could be prevented.
Therese’s replacement eventually came. Natalya Jalinski’s impending arrival was announced a few weeks in advance, and having undertaken some research into her background I was surprised to find pictures of a bright eyed, waif-like woman, almost ethereal. She had not only trained at the Vaganova, but had also been accepted afterwards as a dancer at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg – where only the finest ballerinas are accepted. It looked possible that I suddenly could be back on track. Natalya would have skills and knowledge far beyond those Therese had possessed. But first I needed to convince her that I was worthy of receiving intensive training from her.
Letters from Yelena Page 8