‘I do! I do!’ Drina cried. ‘But I shan’t – not yet. Oh, Granny, promise that you won’t tell anyone. Not even Miss Whiteway? It’s enough that we know!’
‘I promise,’ said Mrs Chester, with a very faint smile, and ushered her into her seat.
After that the last ballet was rather lost on Drina. She was still too amazed, too happy, too unbelieving. Ivory! Of all the great dancers of the past and present Ivory had been her mother!
She knew that she would never, as long as she lived, forget those moments under the chandeliers, when she had learned the whole truth.
Come a Stranger
by Cynthia Voigt
Mina has won a scholarship to a dance camp in Connecticut – eight whole weeks away from her family and friends, and a far cry from the close community in Crisfield she’s used to. But Mina is determined to show that she can dance as well as anyone else . . .
FROM THE FIRST, Mina loved her room at camp, room 226, halfway down the long corridor. It had two beds, two windows, two dressers, two desks, and one closet which she shared with her roommate, Isadora. The beds were covered with brightly striped fabric, and the curtains matched the bedspreads. The windows looked out through the leafy branches of trees to the green quadrangle at the centre of the college. Although the room was only on the second floor, there was always a breeze to keep it comfortable, because the college had been built along the ridge of the hills that bordered the broad river.
They stayed on the campus for the whole eight weeks, except for one trip into the city of New Haven, to see a performance of Swan Lake at Yale University. Some of the girls, especially the older ones, complained that they felt cooped up, imprisoned, but Mina never did, not for a minute.
There were seventy people living in the dormitory, and all of them were dancers. There were four dance classes, divided by age, with sixteen girls in each class. There were three dance instructors and three assistants who were taking the master classes as well as keeping an eye on the younger students. They all lived together and ate together and worked together. Music and dance, dance and music – that was what they did, all day long. They had a dance class every morning and a music class every afternoon, taught by a professor from the college. In the evenings, there was almost always something planned, either observing one of the master classes or listening to a concert given in the small college theatre or watching a movie of a ballet or symphony. Sunday mornings they went to the non-denominational chapel, whose bells rang out over the quadrangle and dormitories to call people to worship. Mina sat amongst the dancers in an oak pew and learned a whole new set of hymns from the bound hymnals that were kept in a rack at the back of each pew with the bound prayer books. The sun shone through the stained glass windows, colouring the air with reds and greens and blues. Mina had never known how much she didn’t know about dancers and about music; she looked ahead at everything she didn’t know, and was glad.
There was always a song rising in her heart, one they sang at chapel on Sundays, while the collection was being taken, ‘Praise God’, the song rose up inside her. ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow.’ Mina felt like praising God and thanking Him about all day long.
The majority of the girls had studied longer and more seriously than Mina had and knew more. Isadora, her roommate, was sure she was destined to become a famous ballerina. ‘My mom says she had a feeling, even before I was born. All the time she was pregnant, she went to at least one ballet performance a week and kept music playing in the apartment. She named me after Isadora Duncan. I’ve got dance in my blood.’
Mina knew what it felt like to have dance in your blood. ‘Who’s Isadora Duncan?’ she asked.
‘You don’t know?’ Isadora looked at her, as if everybody should know, as if Mina came from a different planet.
‘Nope, never heard of her. Are you going to tell me?’ Mina didn’t mind not knowing, she just minded not having her curiosity satisfied.
‘Isadora Duncan was a great dancer, probably the greatest modern dancer. She’s like Martha Graham, Twyla Tharp . . .’ Mina shook her head, she hadn’t heard of any of these people. She tucked the names away in her memory, to learn more about them. ‘Isadora Duncan was the first – she broke away from classical ballet and went back to the ancient Greeks. She wanted dance to be free from rules and things, anything artificial. She thought life shouldn’t have so many rules. She danced in draperies, in bare feet, like the Greeks. Her dances were free and strong. She died young, when the scarf she was wearing got caught in the wheel of a car. See, she always wore long, long scarves around her neck.’ Isadora mimed wrapping a scarf around her neck, her long arms graceful. Mina could see what Isadora Duncan must have looked like. Mina was sitting on the floor by her bed, watching Isadora. ‘But her boyfriend had a convertible. The scarf got caught in the tyre and – it just snapped her neck,’ Isadora concluded. ‘It was a tragedy. She had lots of men, all madly in love with her, all the time.’
‘What would your mother have done if you’d been a boy?’
‘Named me Isadore. There are male dancers.’
Mina laughed, ‘I know that.’
Charlie, short for Charlotte, who lived across the hall with Tansy, said that Isadora’s mother was typical, a typical stage mother. Charlie often said things like that, in a superior way, as if she knew more. She acted closer to sixteen than eleven, most of the time. ‘Typical, pushy stage mother.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Isadora said. ‘I’m going to be a prima ballerina. It’s nothing to do with my mother, except she thinks I can, so she helps out. And all.’
‘– and I should know,’ Charlie continued, not paying any attention. ‘I’ve got one too. It’s pretty pitiful in a way – it’s because she wanted to be a singer. But she got married, instead. And had kids, instead. And keeps house, instead. And nags, nags us all.’
‘Even your father?’ Mina wondered.
‘Especially Dad. Then she complains because Dad spends so much time out of town on business and nags him more.’ Charlie shook her head, pitying the stupidity of her mother. Charlie had no intention of going on with ballet. She wanted to be in the movies. ‘I’m photogenic, and – there’s never the same kind of life in ballet even if you’re a success, not like movies, when you’re a movie actress. Ballet teaches you how to move. An actress has to know how to . . . move right.’
Charlie’s roommate, Tansy, was a little plain girl, quiet and hard-working. Mina couldn’t imagine why the camp had put Tansy and Charlie into the same room. Tansy had even been homesick for the first week, even though she really wanted to come to dance camp.
‘How can you be homesick?’ Mina had asked, trying to comfort her. ‘Wouldn’t you rather be here?’
Charlie and Isadora had exchanged a look at that. Mina caught it, out of the corner of her eyes. It was almost the kind of look kids give one another across the classroom, when they know something the teacher can’t begin to understand.
‘Well, I would,’ Mina said to the two of them. She didn’t know what they thought they knew that she didn’t. ‘Even though I miss my family too.’
‘Your family’s different,’ Charlie pointed out.
‘I miss my dog,’ Tansy snuffled.
Mina chuckled at that, and the chuckle spread out warm into a laugh. The laugh lit up the whole dormitory room, even the farthest corners of it, and pretty soon everybody joined in, even Tansy, sitting up on the bed and blowing her nose into a tissue. She looked at Mina as if Mina was strange and wonderful.
The four of them were going to work together on the ten-minute performance that every dancer at the camp had to give for the final exercises. Their instructor, Miss Fiona Maddinton, had told them about it on the first day, after they each had an individual conference with her. In the conference, she had told each of the sixteen girls in her class what she thought when she watched them during the audition or, in Mina’s case, when she looked at the tape Miss LaValle had mailed up to New York. Miss LaValle had r
ented a video camera up in Cambridge and Mina had performed in front of it, the barre exercises and a dance they had worked out to part of the Nutcracker Suite. ‘You have strength,’ Miss Maddinton said during her conference with Mina, ‘and a certain rude grace. Even on that tape your presence made itself felt. A dancer has to have presence. But,’ she went on, when Mina opened her mouth to ask what the teacher meant, ‘you don’t have discipline. It’s discipline I will teach you. Natalie?’ she called, indicating that the talk was over, summoning up the next girl. In the long working days, the hours of practice, Mina was learning what Miss Maddinton meant. Miss Maddinton seemed pleased with her. She was surely pleased with herself: she had never worked so hard and learned so much.
The performance, Miss Maddinton had told them, could be done in groups, or individually, but had to be prepared without any adult help of any kind. Even the instructors were going to take part in the final exercises, performing for ten minutes. A lot of the girls from the class had asked Mina if she wanted to work with them, but Isadora and Charlotte and Tansy had asked her first, and she would have preferred to dance with them anyway. They were going to do an original ballet, based on Narnia. The other three had decided that, because Mina had never heard of Narnia.
‘But those books have been on every reading list since I was in third grade,’ Isadora said. ‘Aren’t they even on your summer reading list?’
‘I don’t have a summer reading list.’
‘Then outside reading.’ But Mina didn’t have that either. ‘You mean, you don’t have to do book reports?’
‘We do reports, sometimes, or projects,’ Mina said, looking around at the other three. ‘For science, or social studies.’
‘What would I give not to have to do book reports,’ Charlie sighed.
They all three lived in New York City and went to private schools, but different schools. Isadora’s rich father sent plenty of money for her and her mother to live on, whether Isadora had a stepfather or not. Tansy’s father was a special kind of dentist, called an orthodontist. And Charlie’s father worked in advertising. Their mothers didn’t have jobs and they had been interested to hear that Mina’s mother did. About everything in their lives was different from Mina’s, and she loved hearing them talk about their lives.
‘I wouldn’t mind book reports. I like reading,’ Mina said.
Charlie dismissed that. ‘You just don’t know any better.’
‘Anyway,’ Isadora interrupted, ‘who has an idea for what we can do?’
Tansy did. Tansy really wanted not to dance, but to choreograph. She had an idea all worked out. ‘If there are two of the children, a boy and a girl – I could be the boy because I’m so small and all – and Charlie would be the girl – and Isadora would dance Asian, all in gold, and Mina could be a Tarkaan but she’d turn into Tash, in the middle . . .’
‘How would she do that?’ Isadora asked.
‘By turning around, or maybe with a mask. I know I can think of a way,’ Tansy said.
‘Like in Swan Lake?’ Mina asked. She had loved that moment when the magician swept his cape aside to reveal Odile, as if she had appeared by magic.
‘Yes, or something like that. It would start out with the children on stage, being – happy or something – and then the Tarkaan would come in . . .’ Tansy stood up from the floor of the practice room where they were working out their project and acted out the parts. ‘He’d try to be nice first and bribe them. Then he’d try to force them –’
‘Force them to what?’ Mina asked.
‘To go with him, to be one of his people,’ Isadora explained quickly. Then she said, ‘I’m sorry, Mina, I didn’t mean to snap at you.’
Mina hadn’t been offended. She didn’t think Isadora had snapped at her. She waited to hear the rest of Tansy’s idea.
‘Then Asian comes in and the Tarkaan seems to give up, but he turns into Tash and they fight over the children. Asian wins and Tash – is defeated.’
Mina could almost see the dance Tansy was talking about. ‘That sounds really good,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t it?’ she asked the other two.
‘What about me doing the Tarkaan, instead?’ Charlie asked. ‘Miss Maddinton says I’m the most dramatic dancer.’
Tansy shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t be as good.’
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Charlie argued.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Isadora answered. ‘You’re dramatic but you don’t – Mina has that presence. Miss Maddinton told her that and she’s right.’
‘Only because I’m taller than everybody else,’ Mina said, trying to pretend she wasn’t flattered. It wasn’t just being tall, she knew, it was her personality too.
‘But can you be bad?’ Tansy asked her. ‘Really, really bad – Tarkaan is bad, but Tash is – evil.’
Mina stood up and turned her back to them. She thought: dark, evil, dangerous. She let that run all through her body, until she spun to face them, tall and stiff; then slowly – to music playing lento in her head – she went through the five positions, feet and hands, thinking all the time of dark and of evil, and how the dark, evil thing would want to spread out and wrap itself around the three girls in the room. When she finished, she smiled at them.
‘Oh, wow,’ Isadora said, clapping, ‘that was neat. See what I mean, Charlie?’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’ But Charlie didn’t sound convinced.
Tansy just looked at Mina, as if Mina was perfect. Mina knew she wasn’t perfect, but she felt good. It was discipline that had enabled her to know exactly how to move through the positions, knowing where she wanted every muscle and every part of her body; she was learning discipline. ‘I think it’ll be fun,’ she said.
‘What music will we use?’ Charlie asked.
‘Something modern,’ Isadora suggested.
Mina had just begun to learn about music, and she kept her mouth shut. There wasn’t anything she could add to this part of the planning.
‘There’s some Bartok,’ Tansy said. ‘Piano suites, kind of simple but not really.’
‘You’re a walking music library,’ Charlie complained.
‘My mom gives me anything I want.’
They all knew that. They had all admired the stereo that was Tansy’s own to bring to camp with her, and the stack of records. They all listened to Tansy’s records. Mina listened more than anyone else except Tansy, because almost all of them were new to her; as if she had arrived in an unknown country with a wonderful geography, she was always ready to listen and hear something she’d never even heard of before dance camp.
‘Mom says since I’m so mousy and all that, I’d better cultivate my brain –’
‘Why do they all want us to get married?’ Charlie cried out. ‘It’s not as if they were having such a good time.’
‘It’s crazy,’ Isadora agreed.
‘My mother’s having a good time,’ Tansy said. ‘I think. She’s always going out to do something interesting, getting dressed up, you know, a show or an exhibition, meeting interesting people, artists and things, having fancy dinners.’
‘Who keeps your house?’ Isadora asked.
‘The housekeeper,’ Tansy told them.
That struck them as funny.
‘Mrs Welker,’ Tansy said. ‘Who keeps yours, Mina? When your mother’s working?’
‘We all do,’ Mina said. ‘You know, we have chores.’
‘Even your father?’
‘Sure.’
‘Boy, if my mother tried to make my father do laundry,’ Charlie said, ‘or vacuum – that would be a fight that would take two weeks to blow over. We’d all starve to death in our rooms before it was safe to come down. But Dad’s in advertising, and there’s a lot of pressure in that. I guess your father doesn’t have that kind of pressure, does he?’
Mina didn’t know. ‘We quarrel,’ she said. Everybody quarrelled, it was human nature, and she hoped Charlie didn’t feel embarrassed because her parents had fights.
Isadora’s
mother had been married and divorced, twice each. ‘Don’t I know about quarrels,’ she said. ‘I’d rather think about this performance.’
‘I wondered,’ Tansy suggested in a particularly quiet voice. Mina sat up to pay close attention. She’d learned that when Tansy used that voice, it was because what she was going to say really mattered to her. Tansy looked at Mina. ‘If Mozart could work, for Asian’s music.’
‘Mozart and Bartok together?’ Charlie laughed.
Mina had heard some Mozart. His name often came up in the music class. She wondered if Mozart was the kind of music you could dance to, though. She didn’t say anything and nobody asked her opinion. They talked on about which of Mozart’s pieces they should listen to.
‘I think we ought to at least try. Whatever else, Tansy really does know what she’s talking about when she talks music,’ Isadora finally said. ‘If it works, we’ll be the most original I bet.’
Mina lifted her right leg on to the barre, toes pointed, and stretched her arms towards it. Watching herself in the mirror, she bent her neck so that it would follow perfectly the curve her back and arms made. Then she looked back beyond herself in the mirror, seeing the whole class, all performing the same exercise, reflected back and forth in the mirrors that lined the two long walls of the room. ‘Praise God’, the song sang inside her, over the notes of the piano.
This was a real dance studio, as different from Miss LaValle’s garage as – she didn’t know anything perfect enough to compare the differences. Even though from the first minute she had stepped into it, she had felt at home, she never lost the feeling of wonder at how right the studio was. It had two narrow walls of tall windows and two long walls of mirrors that went from ceiling to floor. The upright piano filled the room with its waltz tempo for the barre exercises, as Miss Maddinton went up and down the line, correcting. ‘That’s good, Mina,’ she said.
The floor was polished wood and the air was filled with light. The music went into Mina’s body, and she brought her leg down in time with it, then lifted her left leg. All along the walls, mirrored back, and front, fifteen girls did the same. In the mirror, thirty-two arms stretched out. Mina let a smile spread over her face.
Darcey Bussell Favourite Ballet Stories Page 12