by JJ Knight
Six weeks of ten-hour rehearsals on yogurt and egg whites will probably do it, though. I think back to how I looked before the three months with Dance Blitz and realize I have yet another metamorphosis ahead. I wonder if my parents will even recognize me if they come to the ballet. I don’t look anything like the girl I once was.
I don’t feel like her either.
After a few minutes, a woman I’ve never met enters the studio. “Sorry to be late,” she says. “The fairies ran over.” She drops a bag on the floor and takes her phone over to the sound system.
I want to ask Dominika who this person is, but judging by the confused tilt of her head, I’m guessing she’s never seen her before either.
The woman turns around. “I’m sorry we did not get a chance to meet before. I’m Teresa, one of the dance coaches. I work at this studio year-round. I’ll be with you until you go on tour, working on technique.”
Dominika stands a little straighter, as if suggesting that her technique needs work is an insult.
Teresa notices the prima ballerina’s stiff stance and smiles. “Do not worry, Dominika,” she says. “I’m not here to change you. I just want to make sure you and Livia look very opposite other than in a few key places where Ivana wants you to almost dance in tandem.”
I will have to try and match Dominika’s style? I hope it’s for only very brief moments because I can’t even imagine getting anywhere near her poise and perfection.
“Come, ladies,” Teresa says. “Since the pianists are all otherwise occupied, I’ve created a loop of the scene where Carabosse gives Aurora the spindle. I understand you’ve had an introduction to the choreography already.”
My face burns. That was two weeks ago and I haven’t practiced it since, afraid I would get it wrong and have to break a bad habit.
But Dominika nods. When the music moves into the section with the spindle, she moves effortlessly into the dance.
I can’t remember a thing. I watch, painfully, as Dominika dances alone. I have some vague ideas of where I should stand, and I recognize one part where we are moving back and forth as if we are on opposite ends of a teeter-totter.
But mostly I just stand there looking rather stupid.
“I’ve only learned the critical parts,” Teresa says with a frown. “But we’ll work on those.” She waits for the music to fade out, then back in at the beginning.
She places me facing Dominika and I remember to hold the pretend spindle, at least. When I lift it to her, she turns away in an elegant pirouette that alternates between bent leg and extended.
“Here is where you mimic her,” Teresa says.
I do a similar pirouette, sensing my clumsiness compared to Dominika.
“That’s it,” Teresa says. “Then quicker and closer together until you are doing it at the same time.”
I continue the pirouette sequence, sensing we are way off.
“The timing will come,” Teresa says. “Let’s work on legs and arms and hands. Dominika, since Livia will be holding a prop, we’ll have to adjust your arm so that you can match her anyway.”
Dominika nods. Teresa stands us side by side, tucking my elbow in, hand near my ribs as if I am holding something, then having Dominika approximate the position.
We review the precise timing of the pirouettes, dancing them over and over again until I start to lose my ability to avoid feeling dizzy, and one of the spins knocks me off balance.
I put my foot down early and miss the next element of the pirouette.
Teresa stops the music.
“It’s all right,” Teresa says. “That many turns in two hours would get to anyone.”
Two hours? I check the overhead clock and see that it is after noon.
“Let’s go ahead and break,” Teresa says. “I’ll see you two again tomorrow. You’ll have reviewed choreography by then and should be able to put together more of this scene.”
My steps aren’t completely steady as I head for my bag. Too little breakfast. Too many turns. Nerves on edge. And it’s only the first half of the first day.
It’s not quite the lunch hour yet when I walk out into the open foyer. I examine the hanging glass sculptures, wondering if I will find Andrew for lunch or have to figure things out on my own.
Then I remember the group chat.
I open Twitter to see what the link is.
My notifications are outrageous, but I’d expect that after Blitz retweeted that dance image.
But there’s another image getting tagged with my Twitter handle.
I pull it up and let out a sigh. Seriously?
It’s an obvious Photoshop fake of Blitz with Giselle. They are gazing at each other fondly in front of the Dancing with the Stars logo. The Tweet says they will be working together on the show.
Her hair isn’t cut out well and the colors from the light on their shoulders don’t even match the neon of the sign. But people are buying it, some angry that he’s already cheating on me, others excited that he’s dancing on TV again.
Uggh. I move on to my direct messages. Sure enough, Carla has sent me a link to download some chat app. I look around. I must be early, as no one else is coming out of the studios yet.
There’s a crystal bench in the middle of the foyer, so I sit on it to download the app and accept the invitation to join the private group. So far, the only people in it are Carla, Fiona, Andrew, and now me.
Andrew messaged between his rehearsals to say we could meet in the foyer for lunch.
I glance at the time. Still five minutes.
A few girls come out finally, laughing and happy as they cross the foyer and go out the doors. They don’t even look my way.
Then more. Several of these were on the bus and wave at me, but they have places to be and hurry out as well.
I feel very much alone and obvious out on the bench. I want to move to the side wall, someplace less conspicuous. All my old insecurities rear up. I’m too strange, too old-fashioned, too out of touch with regular people.
Maybe I’m not going to make four days after all. Or the three Ivana and Evangeline were giving me.
Perhaps these more experienced people see me more clearly than I see myself.
Then it all turns around.
Andrew comes out, along with two other female dancers. He waves me over, and I’m brought along with this happy crew to eat veggie burgers at a cafe down the street.
The reversals are so swift. I’m like a pendulum, shifting from anxiety to acceptance. Without Blitz, I have no ballast to keep me even and steady. I will have to figure out how to do this on my own.
It will be okay. I must be patient. And I must have faith.
Chapter 20
The next few weeks are a blur.
There are trainers I like, including Teresa and Franco.
There are moments that are hard, usually those involving Ivana and Evangeline.
My scenes with Dominika are not the most difficult for her by far, so after a few days of practice, I see her very little. She has many much more technical scenes with fairies and the Prince and her solos.
I spend a lot of time with the artistic director, an older lady named Barb who danced for the New York City Ballet for decades. She’s funny and warm, but very exacting. I probably would have liked her if she wasn’t sharply criticizing my dance four hours a day.
Much of the time I’m with Barb and the fairies, learning the opening scene where I place a curse on the baby princess. It’s a long scene with many parts, and tons of cast members come in and out, from the king and queen to the nurse and baby, fairies and corps dancers male and female. It’s crazy and only one of the studios is large enough to hold us all.
Dancers line the walls, sitting on the floor when it’s not their turn to come in. A funny young man in a newsboy cap plays the piano in the corner. Sometimes when we blow a scene or Barb stops us in irritation, he’ll play a silly line to go along with her mood. A villain’s entrance. The theme to Jaws.
Barb often c
uts him annoyed looks, but he’s impervious to her disapproval.
The only breaks in the day are lunch, costume fittings, and physical therapy to make sure we are not stressing our bones or joints. I dance less than many of the ballerinas. The corps dancers are particularly stressed. Carla and Fiona and Andrew are constantly complaining about fatigue.
Blitz and I talk via FaceTime every night. He’s filling his days with the two male gymnasts at Jenica’s. He is pretty sure between the aerial silks and the trampoline acrobatics he’s learning, he could run away with a circus.
“I’m willing to work for peanuts,” he says, kicked back on our sofa.
I look greedily at him, at the house behind him. It all feels so far away.
“I’m not sure a ballerina can support your lifestyle,” I say.
“Oh, you didn’t see the cut I just made for you on the DVD,” he says. “You’re on the cover, you’re a costar. Forget that no-name Prince. He doesn’t even show up for half of it.”
I shake my head. Blitz is good to have on my side.
I miss him, but my exhaustion is so complete that I think about it a lot less than I expected. My friendships with Carla, Fiona, and Andrew are helpful in the scenes where we are together. It’s nice to have someone to sit by and chat with when I’m not dancing.
I haven’t seen Weeza the entire time we’ve been here, other than glimpses at breakfast. She’s obviously not a corps dancer, or she would be in the curse scene with the rest of us. Evangeline must have moved her up to a role in Act 3, the wedding. I’m not in that one at all, so it makes sense we haven’t crossed paths.
During the fourth week, a new girl arrives in rehearsals and introduces herself to me. She says she is my understudy, and she will be doing my role during some rehearsals in case I can’t perform.
More understudies appear in the next few days, including one for Dominika and the Prince.
I finally see Weeza during costume fittings about two weeks before opening night. The head seamstress is fitting a piece of fur to her bodice. She must be White Cat.
I bite back a giggle at the thought of the girl who always wears black suddenly going out in white. She spots me and carefully looks away. It’s strange that she has some grudge against me, even now. I guess she lumps me in the sellouts and is even more incensed that I got the part she wanted for herself.
Still, I try to talk to her.
“I’ve heard White Cat is a really fun role,” I say.
She shrugs. “It’s short.”
“Something you can build on for the next opportunity,” I say, remembering what Juliet told me.
Weeza shrugs again, so I give up on having a conversation.
My costume is glorious. Black and glittery, it’s a short traditional tutu covered in a long flowing overdress. For the opening scene, I wear it all, large and imposing and dark as night. Then, when I disguise myself as a peasant to present the hidden spindle to Aurora, I wear a light-colored cape over only the smaller tutu, to allow for our push-pull of a dance.
Once she’s been pricked, my minions bring me the overdress again, so I’m back to my full presence of sparkling black.
I do have a bit of a bone to pick with the way the waking-up scene plays out. In all the Sleeping Beauty stories I’ve seen, Carabosse is a force to be reckoned with, a dragon or a powerful enchantress.
In the ballet, they kind of cut to the chase. I stand guard over Aurora with my minions, but when the Prince arrives, the Lilac Fairy sort of waves her hands around, and I’m defeated.
Just like that.
Hollywood would never stand for such an anticlimax.
But this is classical ballet, and so when Angelique uses her paltry magic that couldn’t even break my terrible spell, I collapse to be carried out by the crow-like minions.
Being a villain isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At least not in the end.
As we approach the dress rehearsals and opening night, the intensity of the workout schedule definitely drops a notch. I guess they don’t want anyone injured right at the end. The understudies are working harder than we are.
I watch mine dance with Dominika in the spindle scene and admit to feeling some chagrin. She’s better than me by a long shot. She should probably have the role.
But the publicity for the tour is in full swing and I’m definitely a headliner. It’s nothing like a TV show. There’s no photographers stalking us or interviews. But I do end up on a Chicago station morning show and Dominika doesn’t. She never mentions it, but I feel the coolness of both her and the dancer playing the Prince in the final rehearsals.
Blitz takes care of sending tickets to Mindy and her family, since they probably shouldn’t come from me. He makes it look like they won them and includes a night stay in a hotel in case they can’t afford one.
I hold on to a set I plan to send to my parents. The Houston part of the tour is still many weeks away. We start here in Chicago, then move on to Boston, Baltimore, New York, and Miami. After Houston, there will still be Los Angeles and Seattle.
I’ve never been to most of these places, only LA. I hope we have time to see the cities. Blitz is coming along on the entire tour, and I’ve decided to break away from the company at that point to stay in places where we can ensure our security plus have our driver and support staff so I can have a little more freedom.
He and his parents will arrive the night before we open in Chicago. I can’t wait to see him. I know I look different, as I expected. More angular, muscular, and strong. I move like a ballerina all the time now, not just when I’m dancing. I’ve made a metamorphosis, like a butterfly from a cocoon.
I’m who I was always supposed to be.
Chapter 21
Blitz arrives in Chicago the day before opening night. I want to go pick him up from the airport, but I’m stuck in final rehearsals and fittings.
I remember Juliet telling me that ballerinas do their own makeup, and it turns out it is true, even in big productions like this one. I frantically call around and secure a makeup artist who can travel with me. It will cost a good chunk of money from my Dance Blitz days, but it’s worth it not to have to worry about some reviewer saying I look ridiculous, or worse, having it sweat into rivulets partway through a dance.
Dominika hears about what I’ve done and asks if we can split the cost and share her. I’m glad to do so, both for the money savings and in hopes we can bridge the divide between us over the publicity.
The day finally ends well past dinnertime. I hurry out of the studio, frantically texting Blitz to see where he might be.
When I get to the hotel, there’s a party or something going on in the bar to the left of the lobby. The noise is tremendous. I’m wondering if it’s something to do with the ballet, when some girl cries out, “I love you, Blitz Craven!”
Of course.
I try to make my way through the melee, but it’s a mob. I spot Blitz’s parents sitting off to one side in a booth and head for them instead.
David stands when he sees me. “Your boy is trapped,” he says. “You might want to go save him.”
“Let him save his own wretched self,” Renata says, reaching her arms out for a hug.
I lean in for a quick squeeze and drop my dance bag in the booth.
“This could go on for hours if he doesn’t have a bodyguard,” I say.
“We didn’t bring anyone,” Renata says. “We flew here with him.”
I let out a long sigh. I had forgotten what this is like. Apparently so did Blitz.
I spot an empty chair at the end of the bar. The mob is at the center of the long wooden counter.
Okay, I can work with this.
I slip off my Crocs and leave them by the booth. I have dance slippers on underneath. I take a small bouncing run to the chair, leap onto the seat, then up onto the bar.
My movements catch the attention of the bartender, then the edges of the crowd. I leap over tip jars and empty glasses until I’m in the center of the mob. As I ex
pected, Blitz is trapped by it, pressed against the bar.
I hold out a hand to him.
He looks up. “I never thought I’d be rescued by a ballerina,” he says.
“Won’t be the last time,” I say.
He hops up on a chair, then he’s beside me, standing on the bar.
Cheers erupt from down below as he kisses me. There are cell phone flashes and the general lighting of the place increases as all the screens flicker on to video us.
Blitz picks me up and turns us in a circle on the bar. The whoops grow louder.
“You are light as a feather,” he says. “Don’t they feed the dancers around here?”
“Ten hours of dancing a day,” I say. “And no McDonalds in sight.”
“We’ll have to fix that,” he says. “The first burger is on me.”
He starts walking along the bar. The crowd tries to move with us, but I see a couple hotel employees with gold badges trying to shift them toward the door.
Blitz steps down on the last chair, gripping me tightly as we hop to the ground. The crowd is kept at bay as we escape to the far side of the bar.
We circle the long way back around to his parents’ booth. Most of the fans have been escorted out.
David scoots over to make room for us. “About time they kicked those kids out,” he grumbles. “A man can’t have a decent drink without getting mobbed.”
He frowns into his beer and takes a drink.
“Thank you for fetching him, Livia,” Renata says. Her hair is piled elegantly on her head and her black linen jacket looks new.
David is the same as always, in a loose navy guayabera with elaborate stitching. His hair is combed over, curling on the ends over his ear. He looks like a curmudgeonly grandfather.
A waitress stops by to ask for our drink order. I just get water. “Big day tomorrow,” I say. “The last thing I need is a hangover.”
Renata nods. “Sensible,” she says.
“So what happened?” I ask Blitz. “Did somebody out you?”
“Right off the bat,” he says. “We checked in, got on the secure floor, and came down for a drink. At first it was just a couple girls, but then they texted people, and it snowballed.”