Belle-Mère was a chaperone at one of the high-school dances, and once she saw that I liked to dance, the jig was up. I had to join her once a day clinging to the back of a chair going through the Zachary Solov exercises. I studied the book, too. I guess I must have thought of it as another kind of sport. Certainly the fat girl in the striped bodysuit didn’t lead to any thoughts of airy-fairy carryings-on.
And I loved my mother. We rather dismissed my father’s departure, but Belle-Mère now had to work down at the florist shop. I worked after school and on weekends as a stock boy and checkout clerk at the Kroger. We didn’t have any money, which didn’t really matter, because Whitehall was one of those provincial towns where your family meant more than anything else. But even so. Balletomania was my mother’s emotional support, and I wasn’t going to be disloyal to her. So I studied our sappy little exercises with her, so she could transform me into another Robert Helpmann. Can you imagine any mother wanting to help her son become like the dainty and overly made-up Robert Helpmann? But she did. What did we know? I think even then I knew more than she did.
It isn’t that those days seem so long ago to me now. The past doesn’t seem all that distant, really. It’s more as though it all happened in that alternate universe. Now, thirty-some years later, a big-deal doctor at St. Vincent’s, there’s very little opportunity to hang around chatting about your days as a ballet dancer and what a great pair of legs you had.
Make that have.
The only person I talk about those days with is Belle-Mère herself. She comes around a couple times a year to look at my daughters’ legs. Margot’s are all right, but what little girl doesn’t have long legs at twelve? And Yvette seems to be more interested in horses and boys. At fourteen, it’s too late for a girl anyway.
As it turned out, fifteen wasn’t too late for me. That’s what Edna McRae said when Belle-Mère hauled me off to Chicago for an interview and an audition.
It was in the spring after I was fifteen that Belle-Mère and I both realized that we’d pretty well done it with the one ballet book and the pudgy girl in the zebra tights. Belle-Mère had met some people from Chicago at the florist shop over Easter week-end. They had come in for some lilies. Which someone had said looked like the lilies Giselle tosses over her head to Albrecht in the second act of the ballet Giselle. They had just seen it in Chicago. My mother then asked them if they were dancers. They laughed and told her they weren’t, but one woman had studied dance at one time, with a teacher named Edna McRae, who she said was quite famous as a teacher.
So my mother called the operator in Chicago and got Edna McRae’s number. Called the McRae studio and inquired about studying there. And was told that students had to come in for an audition if they were no longer children.
Belle-Mère chickened out and told them about her wonderful, talented son, not mentioning herself. And they gave her an appointment. On a Saturday.
We got up very early on that Saturday morning and took the bus to Chicago, about four hours away. Belle-Mère had been to Chicago enough to find her way around. I was completely overwhelmed: the Loop with trains traveling above our heads, the streets jammed with people. I tried not to show it, but I was terrified of being separated from Belle-Mère. I was sure I would be lost forever once swept off in that mob of shoppers.
We found Edna McRae’s studio in an office building. Just a little office with some dressing rooms at one end and a doorway into a large studio at the other. I looked in the door and saw Edna McRae.
I may have been afraid of Chicago, but I was even more frightened of Edna McRae. Five feet two, weighing in at 150, 160 pounds, wearing bright red hair. In the opposite corner, each weighing in at about forty pounds and wearing pink tutus, was a covey of little girls. They all had their guard up.
We had been told by the receptionist to take a seat on a bench just inside the door. That way we could watch the class and Miss McRae would talk to us after class. I had never seen a ballet classroom before. Big, rectangular mirrors covering one wall and long wooden railings running around the other three walls on two levels. One about waist height, the other lower.
As we tried to silently walk to the bench, without turning to look at us, Edna said, from the corner of her mouth, “What do you want?”
Belle-Mère pushed me in front of her. She said, “We want to dance. I mean, he wants to dance.”
Edna, who had somehow wedged her refrigerator-shaped body into a black slipcover, turned and advanced towards us. The refrigerator was supported on two beautifully arched feet in immaculate pink kid slippers. She looked at me. Then at my feet. Then gestured towards the bench and turned back to the children.
“Let’s get this straight, girls,” she said, “this is no Dolly Dinkle school. We are here to work.” The little girls fluttered to the lower rank of the wooden railing and took their places, one behind the other, one hand grasping the rail, their heels neatly together, their feet turned out, looking straight ahead.
She gestured to the pianist, an elderly lady, and chords struck. “Squatty-vous, girls.” she said, and they were off. We proceeded to see our first ballet class. I was interested but Belle-Mère was in a trance. The Red Shoes was happening to her. As each of the exercises unfurled, one following another, I remembered the chubby girl in the striped tights that we had copied out of our instruction book back in Whitehall. Miraculously, each exercise we had clumsily done now was passing before my eyes, in exactly the same order, only now it was rows of slender little pink legs that were doing them.
I suppose then what attracted me most was the feeling that everyone knew exactly what they were doing, when to do it, and had faith that it was for some reason.
The little girls squatted down in their pliés, feet together, then feet apart, then feet in front of each other, just as the book had shown. They pointed their little feet: in front of them, beside them, behind themselves. In the flesh, it didn’t look so hard, and I was sure I could do it. Beside me, my mother was jerking a little spasmodically this way and that, doing those ronds de jambe and grands battements right along with the class. Pretty obviously, she was going to have to go to class, too. But, I decided, not with me.
When their barre work was done, the class, like a flock of little pink pigeons, whirled out onto the floor and fell into rows behind each other. Evidently the pecking order had already been established.
Miss McRae turned towards me and gestured towards the wooden barre. “Do you think you can do that?” she said. Belle-Mère said eagerly, “Of course, of course.” In a voice that could have etched glass Miss McRae said, “Oh, I know you can: I was thinking more of him.”
I nodded several times to show my enthusiasm. She turned back to her little pink flock and put them through their paces of pirouettes and jetés. They weren’t half bad for a bunch of little kids from Chicago. Finally, she let them go, all perspiring faintly. Each in turn had to come up and shake Miss McRae’s hand and curtsey before they could leave. Eager mothers’ eyes peered around the doorjamb, and each snatched up her little pink pearl as she rolled out into the reception room.
Poor Belle-Mère. I’m sure she thought there would be endless enchanting days of watching ballet class. She didn’t know it was to be her last for some time. Miss McRae had a strict rule that no one was to watch class–with rare exceptions. Particularly mothers.
After the class Miss McRae rather kindly explained to me that if I wished, I could go to the Capezio store down the block and buy black tights, a black dance belt, and either black or white ballet slippers. She preferred white because of the “finished” look it gave the foot.
I didn’t know what a dance belt was and had no idea what a “finished” foot looked like, but I said nothing. I was game to try.
With these purchases, I could wear a white T-shirt, white socks, and a belt to roll the waist of the tights over. Obviously the dance belt was something other than this. This was her regulation classroom uniform for boys, and I never wore anything different in t
he years of classes that were to follow.
Later, in New York, dancers would come to class in assorted dilapidated sweaters, floppy knit leg warmers, ankle warmers, and even sometimes wool scarves. Some boys even affected low-cut leotards to show off their chests. But anyone who had started at the McRae school scorned this look as being “French.” In our opinion, the French could do everything well that had to do with ballet–except dance it.
But I get ahead of myself.
Late in the afternoon, I had a private class with Edna to see what she thought of my possibilities. Belle-Mère stayed in the reception room, carefully rolling her head scarf from one corner to the opposite into a long tube, then unrolling it, and after several repetitions changing corners to roll it in the opposite direction. So it wouldn’t get too wrinkled, I guess.
I was in the studio standing near the piano wearing my new outfit. I had discovered what a dance belt was: a wide belt of elastic, with a strap between the legs, wider on one side than the other. It was pinching my little privates very uncomfortably. Miss McRae explained to me the importance of the first position: heels together, legs straight, toes turned out as far as possible while holding the arches up.
She took the time to explain why she wanted me to do these things. She told me later that she had spotted me immediately as being a “mental” dancer; and she made the effort because I had such nice legs. “A shame to not get them on the stage,” she said.
“We’re training your legs to turn out at right angles from your hips,” she said. Then she laughed. “In fact we’re deforming you. Like the Chinese used to bind feet, but not so bad.” I’m sure she knew that anyone of my age would love that. “If your feet turn out and your legs don’t, we have accomplished nothing.
“Ballet requires that dancers move in flat planes across the stage, framed by the proscenium arch. The audience has to see your torso, arms, and head from the front, while they see your legs in profile. Once you are deformed, you can make beautiful images for the audience.”
Of course I loved it. Maybe I wouldn’t bend and weave like a lotus blossom on tiny deformed feet, but I was sure I would have some kind of exotic allure. I’m sure I didn’t think I was doing this to drive men mad with desire, but it must have been under there somewhere. And I’m positive that’s why Belle-Mère wanted to dance in the first place.
All the while, the pianist was tinkling away, playing the classroom melodies I was to come to know so well: Chopin for the petits battements, Faust for the grands battements, the second act of La Bohème for the ronds de jambe, Tchaikovsky for the adagios, Strauss sometimes for the allegro part where you jump and hurl yourself about. After an hour and a half, Miss McRae decided it was not too late for me to hope to dance. But, she demanded, did I hope to dance? She was a perceptive old bird. The hovering mother told her something. She was used to hovering mothers, of course, but not so accustomed to fifteen-year-old boys.
Now I can’t imagine what I hoped for. I guess I hoped for something wonderful to happen to me. I was bored in Michigan, and I suppose I was enthusiastic as much for Miss McRae’s sake as for my own. Like every interviewee, I wanted to give the right answers.
Chicago, Chicago
Thus it came to pass that Belle-Mère and I moved to Chicago. Moved to an apartment of which I only remember the smell of gas heaters and drying damp dance clothes. Belle-Mère was taking the adult beginner evening class at Miss McRae’s school, which began when my last class ended. We passed like ships in the night. Exhausted, thin, pale, and happy.
I had to finish school, so I was enrolled at an academy for theatrical children where one attended classes in the morning only. God knows that most of the student body was theatrical if not destined for the theater. At other schools, they said that our school had to call off the Virgins’ Parade; one was sick and the other one didn’t want to march alone. Since I was always in good health, I guess I qualified as the one who wouldn’t march alone.
At ballet school I took two classes every day. In the afternoon I was the lumbering oaf among the little girls in pink. Edna told me this would be my trial by fire. If I could stand being made a fool of by a bunch of little girls, I stood a chance of building a true technique.
In fact, it hardly bothered me at all. Like two kinds of wild animals grazing side-by-side in the Serengeti, the little pink ones never paid any attention to me. They were too young to feel any kind of boy/girl thing, and I wasn’t old enough to be a parent. So they ignored me. And I ignored them.
In a few days, I was concentrating so hard on feeling my body and trying to get it to do the things that Miss McRae was showing us, I could have been training with a troupe of trained orangutans. I was so busy getting those drooping elbows up, those knees straight, those toes pointed that I wouldn’t have noticed if anyone was laughing at me. Which they weren’t. The children just flung themselves about and repetition did the trick for them. All they needed was instinct and the right proportions. Time they had. But I had to concentrate, and I found I liked to.
The five o’clock class, my second class of the day, was another matter. This advanced class was entirely made up of adult students and late teenagers. There were occasionally dancers from the Chicago Ballet (which did have some good dancers–a few). The Broadway shows on tour also contributed dancers to the class when they were in town. (Often they had good techniques, but they tended to be bouncier.) Our local contributions, on the other hand, were largely pleasant girls with their hair pulled tightly back into a bun and large thighs and buttocks. Now they probably tell people, “I would have had a wonderful career as a dancer if I hadn’t met Fred/Frank/Bill.”
For the most part, the boys were a cross-section of Chicago’s best-looking young homosexuals. Do most homosexuals decide at some point in their lives that they must dance? This group changed frequently. Not in style but in identity.
Going to ballet class as an adult male, in those days, was really putting it on the line. This was pre–Edward Villella, and ballet boys were never butch. To enter the ranks of admitted homosexuals required a certain level of physical beauty and noticeable personality. As with everything else, standards have slipped, and everyone including your uncle Fred is out of the closet. Men used to walk the streets looking for someone to love. Now they look like they’re walking the streets looking for someone to kill.
In the company of these passing beauties of the day, I changed into my dance clothes every evening in the dilapidated little boys’ dressing room. For my first class, I was all alone, but for the grown-ups’ class I was in a twittering birdcage full of “Oh, my dears” and “Well, I said, Mary …” They were all friendly in their babbling, cheerful way. And it was from them I learned all the minutiae of dressing for ballet. Getting the exact size of shoe, so tight that your toes can’t move; putting your full weight on the ball of one foot as you went onto demi-pointe would soon stretch it a lot. My first pair, which fit like bedroom slippers, were soon so loose they were dangerous. And they didn’t stick tight to the foot so as to look good when you pointed your toes. Talk about “Oh, my dear!”
The boys showed me how to bend the back of the shoe to find the exact spots to sew on elastic. And they pointed out that I, or someone, had to sew the elastic carefully inside the shoe, so it looked good, but neatly under the binding of the drawstring, so it wouldn’t give you blisters. Years later, I read that Oscar Levant had said that ballet was homosexual baseball. It was all of that and more. Tough, tough, tough on the feet, the ankles, the knees, the back. It may look like you’re drifting about like a dandelion, but you’re actually whanging and banging away like a trench digger.
They taught me how to correctly wear my dance belt, too. I supposed the wide side was to cover the crack in my buttocks and always wore it that way. Billy Somebody noticed this one day and said, “You’ve got your dance belt on backwards.” I muttered that I thought if I wore it the other way around, it wouldn’t cover my rear end. “But that’s the whole point,” said Billy,
somehow tossing his blond crew cut and his perfect fanny at the same time as he exited the dressing room. I didn’t quite understand what point he meant, but I turned it around anyway.
Every day I looked forward to watching the professional class, which immediately preceded ours. Student dancers were allowed to watch from the door, and I was always early for my class in order to watch the “real dancers.” And the fact that we couldn’t dance anywhere near as well as professionals didn’t keep us from being critical.
The students in this class were largely from the Chicago Opera. I came to realize that touring companies flocked to Miss McRae’s classes also, because she was famous in the ballet world for her ability to improve technique. When you wanted to turn more pirouettes, jump higher, improve your feet, beat those feet back and forth faster and more times, you went to Edna McRae.
When I saw luscious, curvy Mary Ellen Moylan of Ballet Theatre, I realized that a girl dancer didn’t necessarily have to be straight up and down and sinewy. And when I saw Melissa Hay-den with her cocky, bantam-rooster demeanor, I realized that a girl didn’t have to be curvy to be sexy.
Belle-Mère took me to see all the visiting companies. The New York City Ballet, Ballet Theatre, and Colonel de Basil’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, with the inexplicable Nina Novak as the leading ballerina, were some of them. I began to be able to contrast some dancers on stage and in the classroom. Elegant André Eglevsky wasn’t very different in the classroom from the aloof, impeccable prince in Swan Lake. He did pirouettes in a kind of funny loopedy-loop manner, like a shot putter getting ready to throw the shot. Miss McRae used to scream, “Up, André, up! Push down with your foot more.” But he never changed. John Kriza was so butchy, ballsy sexy you didn’t much care how well he danced–which wasn’t fantastic. Watching them, I learned the secret of the stars: “Don’t ever try to do anything on stage you don’t do well.” On stage you never saw their faults; they always seemed perfect.
The Sex Squad Page 2