by Tonya Plank
“I mean, you’ve got as the centerpiece of your team a Las Vegas dancer who’s starred in a big, popular theatrical show, and the three times Blackpool showdance champion,” he nearly shouted.
“You’re so right!” Alessia popped out of her chair and hugged him. Oh good lord.
I forced myself to smile as she moved from him to embrace me. But over her shoulder, I caught his eye, gave him my nastiest glare possible. Fancy theatrical lifts. He’d agreed to leave out tricks for tricks’ sake. I wanted to kill him.
I wanted badly to talk to him as we exited her office. But I was almost late for my coaching with Drew.
“After you,” he said, extending his hand toward the stairs.
“I only have a second, but let me make this clear,” I said looking at him as I descended the staircase.
“Be careful, that’s not the best way to go down a flight of stairs you know—”
“Shut up.” I stopped. He stopped. I grabbed his black t-shirt, fisted as much of the material into my hand as I could. The shirt was tight and it was hard not to touch muscle. Serious muscle. Damn, he had an eight pack in there. Okay, focus, Belle. He widened his eyes, his penetrating pupils shooting that electric spark down my spine again. “I am only doing this for Alessia. And for myself, so that I don’t lose my job if the studio closes. I am not doing anything more with you than what is required for this team. I am not. And we are going to do this on my terms. No flashy B.S. We are going to tell a beautiful story with our routine and fill the dance with passionate choreography that furthers that goal. No theatrical nonsense. That’s not what audiences—at least ballroom audiences—respond to, and I should know, don’t you think?”
He nodded, a cocky grin covering his face that I wanted to rip right off. “Yes, ma’am, you’re the boss.”
“Don’t you even dare try to humor me,” I spat.
“Believe me, I’d try no such thing. You’re the champion. You heard me say that. You are the boss.” He still wore that grin. He raised his eyebrows again, creating a pool of hot liquid in my center. He needed to stop doing that. Or, rather, I needed to stop letting him do that to me.
“What’s that look on your face about?”
He shook his head and shrugged without removing the grin. “I was just wondering what you meant that you wouldn’t do any other kind of dancing with me than what was required by the team? What other kind of dancing would we do?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. What had I said? I remembered saying it. What had I meant? Had I been thinking in the back of my mind that we’d be at Blackpool dancing a showdance together? Had I had that vision? How could I have done that to Willem? I stepped down to get away from Jett and almost lost my footing.
“Careful,” he said reaching out for me. He caught me and held me up. I felt heat spread from my feet up through my center to my shoulders. I had to go. I struggled out of his embrace.
“I’m fine.” I turned and took the rest of the steps two at a time.
Chapter 17
Jett
I couldn’t believe Arabelle’s words to me on the stairs. That she’d never dance anything other than the team dance with me. Had she been thinking of competing in showdance with me, just the two of us, at the professional cabaret competitions? At Blackpool? She couldn’t have meant anything else. So, she was at least subconsciously thinking of us as a partnership.
But did I want that? I had my Vegas career, which I loved. I could manage both though. I was a master juggler. Hell, yes, I wanted to dance with Arabelle. I knew my Tarzan routine backward and forward—until Veronique wanted me for another show, Belinda and I really needed no practice. I just had to show up at the theater. I had all my free time to devote to competition. I hadn’t done comps since I was in ballet school as a kid, and man, did I thrive on them. That’s where you could show what you were made of. I was a born competitor. I knew what it took and I’d get us there. We’d kill that damn Latin formation team from the other studio. I just needed Arabelle to let me do my thing. Hopefully she wouldn’t fight me too much. We needed the difficult moves. The judges knew what was hardest, and they rewarded you on that. They also rewarded you on what was most compelling to the crowd. Yes, you needed artistry too, but that was secondary. Believe me, I knew. I did a lot of ballet comps.
I had a private lesson with a new student today, Corey. She had little dance training but wanted to learn fouetté turns and pirouettes. She’d apparently seen me doing those earlier in the week. Oh wow. Turns are tough, and for advanced students.
I tried to teach her but it was hard because she had so little dance training. I focused on showing her how to wind up for the pirouettes, doing them two-footed at first.
Drew and Arabelle were in the main room, toward the corner. I couldn’t help noticing how bad Arabelle’s tremor was while she was working with Drew and the coach. The tremor was worse than I’d ever seen it. They couldn’t maintain connection at all. She kept apologizing and was now grabbing her wrist as if that would help. The coach looked more worried than mad and she kept telling Arabelle to stop apologizing, it was unnecessary and a waste of time and breath. I wondered if our conversation with Alessia had made Arabelle more anxious. It was stressful to know the studio was counting on you to win a big comp in order to stay solvent. That’s not exactly what Alessia had said, but that was the general takeaway for me—that we needed wins or else.
“I’m getting help for it, I really am,” I heard Arabelle say at one point. I wondered what that meant.
Toward the end of the session, Drew tried to whip her around, leading her out into a series of wicked spins, then pulling her back in close to him. But when he went to reach for her arm to pull her in, she was shaking so badly, he unintentionally let go, and she went stumbling several steps before falling.
“Hey, Arabelle, you okay?” I called out. But Drew was already at her side, holding her madly shaking hand. He picked her up.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” She nodded, regaining her footing. “It’s okay,” she said to Drew, shaking off his hand. He let go, then huddled close to her. The coach joined in and they whispered. I apologized to Corey and returned my full attention to her as she tried without success to make two pirouettes in a row.
“No, it’s totally okay. But what’s wrong with her?” Corey asked. She’d told me she was new here, but I was still somehow surprised that she didn’t know of Arabelle. Plus her tone was laced with judgment, as if Arabelle had a horrible, contagious disease.
“Nothing.”
Corey raised her eyebrows. “With all that shaking?”
“Nothing. Seriously,” I repeated. “She just had a recent tragedy, followed by a frightening experience. She’ll be perfectly fine in no time.”
But I was wrong. She transferred her tremulous nerves to me during our team practice. And I was probably partly to blame. At the beginning of class, I ran the comp plans and accompanying schedule by the students. I’d done some research on the best comps that were closest to L.A., and okayed it with Alessia. The first was the big one in Vegas, followed by one in Orange County a month later. The team was absolutely ecstatic about the comps, about working their asses off and increasing class time. I knew they would be. There wasn’t a lazy one on the team. I was proud and super psyched. But my excitement may have brought Arabelle’s nerves on. Damn, I’d have to be more aware.
She and I demonstrated the opening of the routine, up until the beautiful but significantly modified bird lift she’d finally agreed to do with me. But her tremor was so bad we just couldn’t get anywhere. I swung her out and pulled her back in, just as Drew had. But I didn’t let go. I held her tightly. The twitch went all the way up her arm, and was beginning to snake up mine as well. But I wasn’t letting go.
I released her hand and pulled her body into mine, to go into the rag doll dip. Her entire body was trembling. The tic affected everything, from the way she arched her back, to the way she stood on her legs with no solidity whatsoeve
r, to her inability to let loose and look relaxed. She looked stiff as a robot but with jerking limbs; the antithesis of lyrical and fluid. It was killing me that this was ruining her beautiful lines, her beautiful form.
Then came the overhead lift. She was shaking so badly, she couldn’t even lift her arms back birdlike. And the tension throughout her whole body created a heaviness, making it seem like she weighed a good three times more than she did. I began to go from kneeling to standing position with her overhead, but it was too much. I couldn’t get a good hold on her center because of her squirming body. Then she must have lost control of her thigh muscles because one of her legs fell out of position, and I nearly got kicked in the face. Okay, that was enough. I wasn’t going to drop her.
I slowly let her down.
“I…I…I’m obviously not liking that lift. We have to change it more,” she said as soon as she was squarely on her feet and had caught her breath. “I want to keep it with you kneeling the whole time, like we’re having the students do. No standing.”
Her words were met with a chorus of groans. I clearly wasn’t alone in my disappointment. No, that wasn’t going to happen. It was far too cool a lift. It totally fit in to our routine and would score us major points to boot. But she was clearly struggling. She was literally shaking now, even though she was solidly on the ground. I wasn’t about to insist on keeping the lift in right now.
“Okay,” I said after a breath. “I know you can do it. And it’s a beautiful lift. But we’ll talk it out later.”
But she shook her head. “The lift is not beautiful. It’s too theatrical. It’s too…it’s too, just stupid, and it’s not…It’s ugly because it’s just a trick meant to wow. It’s meaningless and ugly.” She threw up her arms. I’d never seen her so inept with words. But she was wrong. It wasn’t stupid and it definitely wasn’t ugly.
“It’s definitely not ugly or stupid,” I said, feeling myself getting defensive. I looked at the students for support. Now they were all silent, either worried about Arabelle or scared she wouldn’t budge. But one by one they began to nod. “See, you’re outnumbered.” I said.
She shook her head, her lips pursed, and her whole body tensed. There was no shaking now, but you could see her muscles visibly flex and tense. She made a fist. She took a deep breath and when she exhaled her nostrils flared. As soon as she unclenched her fist, the tremor began again.
I placed my hand gently on her arm. She looked at my hand. The shaking stopped, at least momentarily. Good, maybe this is what it took. Gentleness, touching, caring. I could do that.
“I need to go get some water. Excuse me,” she said, pulling away.
“Okay,” I said, unsure whether I should follow her. I couldn’t leave the students. They weren’t paying for us to run off after each other. So we stood around for a moment. It would be hard to choreograph without her. And I didn’t know how long she would be gone. Then, I got an idea.
“You guys go over the opening. Practice makes perfect. I’ll put on the music. I’m going to make a quick call and I’ll be back in just a sec.”
“Sure thing, J,” Kendra said.
I ran out the door and called Belinda.
“Hey, what’s up?” she answered.
“Hey, just wondering if you’re in Hollywood?”
She was. She was just getting out of ballet class, right up the street. Perfect. I asked her if she could help out, as my regular co-coach wasn’t feeling well. I promised to pay her a couple hours work.
“No prob, Jett. Sounds fun!”
By the time we went over the opening sequence once more, Belinda arrived. Arabelle hadn’t yet returned.
“Damn that was fast,” I said running toward her.
“I was only across the street.” She gave me a cheek kiss. “This looks fun!” She eyed the students with a wide grin.
“Guys, as most of you know, I’m a dancer in the ‘Look of Love’ show currently at the theater up the street. This is Belinda, my partner there, who some of you may have seen me perform with at the student showcase earlier this month. I thought she could help us choreograph until Arabelle feels better so, you know, we don’t waste time.”
The students initially looked dubious, but leave it to Kendra to warm everyone up to a new idea.
“Cool. We don’t have a lot of time until the first comp, so any help we can get would be awesome.”
Belinda nodded. “Show me what you guys have.”
I saw Arabelle enter the room right as we began going over the routine. She held a large bottle of Evian. Her mouth dropped and she stopped walking. I held a finger up to her indicating I’d explain as soon as we finished the opening sequence. The music was playing and I didn’t want to stop it.
“Okay, you walk away and I lunge toward you,” I directed Belinda. The students danced alongside us. “Good, now I whip you back and you lean over me, like the students are doing.” She looked at Judy and Paolo, nearest to her, and imitated Judy. It felt perfect. I looked in the mirror. She didn’t have Arabelle’s gorgeous lines or lyricism but she did the step perfectly and the mini-lift felt right. “Okay, now the students are going to hold that position while we do the bird lift. Take your back foot off the floor. I’m going to slowly rise to a standing position, and then go to one hand. That wasn’t the modified lift Arabelle had insisted on, but I knew Belinda could do it full out and I wanted to see how it looked in the routine.
“Okay!” One word, full of excitement. Just the way I loved my partners.
I slowly rose, balancing her center in both of my hands. She was heavier than Arabelle but she held her body well and it wasn’t hard at all. I looked up at her as I stood all the way, then extended my arms and lifted her all the way up. She arched her back and raised her arms and legs. Loud applause from the students.
“Yes!” Kendra said.
Slowly, as I balanced and tested her weight, I let my right hand do most of the work, then all of the work. And I ever so slowly let go with my left hand, holding her only by the right.
I could feel her core lose a bit of its strength, telling me it was time to let her down into a fish dive.
“Okay,” I called out, letting her know.
“Yep,” she said.
I released my hand from her center and she dropped. I caught her at my waist. I’d have loved to have rolled her down like I’d seen Willem and Arabelle do, but we’d never done that before. So, I just dropped her straight, catching her in my arms. I whipped her lower body up and to my back. She wrapped her leg around my back and held it there.
“Okay,” she said.
I let go of her waist and voilá, we went into a hands-free fish dive.
“Awesome!” Judy said. Applause and hoots echoed throughout the room—the whole room, not only the students. Belinda was getting shaky. She couldn’t hold her back up as long as Arabelle could.
As I grabbed her and let her down, I looked out and realized we had a pretty big audience. Everyone in the private lesson room had stopped what they were doing to watch, and the door to the hall was open, with several faces peeking around the corner. The only face I couldn’t find was Arabelle’s. Shit, what happened to her?
“Super fun, awesome routine you guys have!” Belinda trilled.
“I’ll be back in a sec.” I ran toward the hall, peeked around the corner. No Arabelle. Crap. I ran down the hall, down two flights of stairs to Alessia’s office. She wasn’t there.
“Everything okay?” asked Alessia seeing my frazzled face.
“Yep,” I said, running toward the lobby. Arabelle obviously hadn’t come to see her. No Arabelle in the lobby. Well, I couldn’t be bothered by this now. I couldn’t leave the team hanging. I’d call her as soon as I finished. Hopefully she’d come back later in the rehearsal anyway.
Belinda was chatting with the students back in the private lesson room. They seemed to be discussing further choreography they wanted. She was excitedly explaining various lifts she knew, most of which she’d done with me
.
“Arabelle didn’t come back, did she?” I interrupted.
Heads shook. “Nope, but I’ll totally take over. I mean for today,” Belinda said. “Your students are great!”
Chapter 18
Arabelle
I couldn’t believe I left team rehearsal, but I just had to. I was shaking too badly. Jett had momentarily stopped it. But he wanted to do a lift I’d done with Willem—or a version of it anyway. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I’d had a bad session with Drew so I was already in a bad way emotionally. When Jett started to go into the lift, I started to feel lightheaded. I felt like I might pass out. I just wanted him to let me down.
As soon as I was on the floor I excused myself and quietly walked out of the private practice room and down the hall, to the ladies locker room. I sat down on the bench, bent over, and put my face in my palms. I still felt weak, and now like I might keel over. I turned to my side and lay down on the bench.
The door opened. I opened my eyes slightly. It was someone I didn’t know. I didn’t want to be somewhere where I had no privacy. I needed water. I opened my locker, took out my purse, changed into my street shoes and walked outside, down the street to the nearest coffee shop. I ordered a bottle of Evian. I drank half of it, then walked back to the studio. I felt a little better, but not much.
When I walked back into the room and saw Jett dancing our routine with his theater partner, I just kind of lost it. This time I stormed out. I was only gone a few minutes and he couldn’t wait? No, he needed to practice that blasted lift all he could. Heaven forbid he lost ten minutes of lift time. Now I felt not only faint, but nauseas too. I walked back to the coffee shop and this time ordered a tall iced mocha with whipped cream. I found a table by the window, where I just gazed out. I don’t know how long I sat there. I had so many emotions bubbling up inside me, and I didn’t even know what all they were. Jett’s calling Belinda made me so mad. So flipping mad. How dare he ask someone to take my place without asking me!