by Meg Howrey
Act III is the Prince’s Birthday Ball, so we’re at his castle. The guests of the ball behave in pretty much the same fashion as the peasants from Act I (they’re the same dancers, after all), and so there’s more milling about and greeting each other and gesturing to Center Stage and admiring each other’s nearly identical outfits. Four Princesses are brought in to meet Siegfried, who’s totally not into them although he condescends to dance a little with each one. Then the Princesses all dance a solo from their native land: a Hungarian dance, a Spanish dance, a Neapolitan dance, and—you guessed it!—a Polish dance. The Queen takes Siegfried aside to ask who he’s going to choose to propose to, and Siegfried looks bummed about the selection when suddenly a New Guest arrives—a mysterious stranger wearing a mask and a cape (Von Rothbart, in disguise)—and with him he has a beautiful woman who looks EXACTLY like Odette, only instead of wearing all white she is wearing all black. This is Odile, the Black Swan. (The program notes will tell you she is Von Rothbart’s daughter, magicked up to look like Odette.)
Odette and Odile are always danced by the same ballerina. It’s why the role is so difficult. Not because you have to be lyrical and romantic and vulnerable as the White Swan and fiery and über-strong and confident as the Black one. That’s not a huge problem, you get a different costume and different choreography and tempi and these are really all you need to change your personality when you’re a dancer. We do it several times a day. The hard part in dancing Odette/Odile is the stamina and concentration involved.
Anyway, it’s no surprise to anyone that the Prince is immediately taken with this fabulous Odile, and since she looks exactly like Odette he convinces himself that she is Odette even though she’s got a totally different personality. There is a lot of bravura dancing—including the famous thirty-two fouetté turns Odile rips off—and dazzled by the pyrotechnics, Siegfried pledges True Love to the Black Swan. Just for a moment, before this happens, we catch a glimpse of Odette far upstage on a platform thing (it’s not actually Odette, of course, since she’s onstage as Odile at that point, but the stand-in Odette is far enough away that the audience can’t see her face and she’s got the Odette costume on). This is meant to show us that off at the lake, Odette has a sense that she is being betrayed and is trying to warn the Prince, but of course this doesn’t work. We are in Days of Yore, and it’s not like she can text him or anything: Odile not 4 real. C U at Lake 2nite. xoxo:) Odette.
Once Siegfried has pledged True Love to Odile, Von Rothbart throws off his cape, reveals Mein Von Goblin Wear, and claims paternity of the Black Swan. Siegfried realizes with horror what he has done. He runs offstage to go find Odette. End of Act III.
We’ve got another intermission here. Maybe for this one you just want to stand up in the aisle rather than trying to jimmy your way up to the bar. Or you could amuse yourself by strolling past the standing-room banister aisle at the back of the orchestra section where the super-fans and students have lolled through three acts. Walk slowly, and you’ll catch them showing off their insider knowledge by using the abbreviated versions of our first names, or debating the merits of various casts. “Is it just me or is ’Sandro looking a little tired tonight? Of course, it’s been a very heavy season for him.” “Emmy last Saturday? She freaking nailed it. I was like, You better work, girl. Work it OUT.”
Now settle in because Act IV is very tragic and moving. A distraught Siegfried returns to the lake to explain the whole clusterfuck to a brokenhearted Odette. The swan corps weaves in and out. Von Rothbart shows up to polish off the curse and condemn Odette and all the rest of the girls to lives as waterfowl.
Odette decides to kill herself. Siegfried, who refuses to be separated from his True Love, swears he will join her. The two of them die together, the lights indicating that they drown themselves in the lake, clasping each other. This act of love is so powerful that it kills Von Rothbart and frees all the swans. We end on a final image of Siegfried and Odette locked together, their souls entwined for all eternity against the backdrop of a rising sun.
And that’s Swan Lake.
I didn’t mean to tell it in such a smartass way. It’s an incredible ballet, even if it is a dusty old warhorse in many ways. People cry at the end, I’m told.
But I didn’t throw my neck out in the middle of Swan Lake tonight because I got all emotional. There we were in Act III and just as I was doing my first promenade around the stage with my little retinue of Polish minions it occurred to me, sort of in a flash, that the Polish Princess was actually a person. That yes, she was a character, a role, whatever, but she could also be said to be a human being.
It’s funny because I’m known for being this skilled “actress,” but I just think of things in, you know, general terms. Joy. Sorrow. Desire. Jealousy. So I got all tripped out thinking about the Polish Princess as an actual separate and complete human being. Because, if that were true, then she would have an opinion about things and even about being at this ball. And maybe she doesn’t really want to be at the ball. Maybe she doesn’t want to marry this Prince Siegfried person either. Maybe the whole time she is being promenaded around and smiling and looking so bright and charming she’s just wondering where the hell the bar is and wanting to take off her stupid headpiece. All during the bits with the Prince I kept adding things to her character. Like maybe she has a slight astigmatism, and this makes her prone to migraines. She had an affair with one of her minions during a particularly bleak winter back in Warsaw. She suffers from social anxiety. She plays the tambourine.
Unfortunately, none of these attributes was at all useful for what I actually had to dance. But I became … attached to these ideas, and they sort of felt more real than everything else. I could have passed a lie detector test about who I was, that’s how real it all felt. And it occurred to me that this is the kind of thing that happens in Gwen’s head all the time. And yes, it did feel a little out of my control. And I wasn’t sure what to cling to.
That’s what I was thinking about when I started the turns on the diagonal, and right at the first one, just as I turned my head, I felt something in my neck implode and pain shot down my right arm all the way to my hand. It felt like someone had hit me with a wrench and then set my arm on fire. For a second, I actually thought I might have … you know … died.
I finished the turns. I did the traveling mazurkas, the sauts de basque, everything. I simplified the last few bars of pirouettes and—somehow—was able to hold a long balance, which got some applause from the audience. Then I was done and my retinue came and got me, and as soon as Odile made her appearance and I wasn’t necessary to any of the action, I told Julius I felt sick and had to bail and slipped into the wings. I think it’s safe to say that nobody noticed the departure of the Polish Princess. Then I went to my dressing room and almost threw up from the pain. I usually share a dressing room with Tamara, but she’s out this season. Hip injury.
I redid my lips and got back into my Big Swan tutu. I danced—in some fashion—Act IV. Curtain call. I stopped by Roger’s dressing room and he gave me two Vicodin from his emergency stash. I came home, or rather, here. Gwen’s apartment.
The official word on Gwen’s absence is that she is recovering from knee surgery back home in Michigan. The real story is that three weeks ago I called Dad and said he had to come and get her, that things were bad and Gwen was out of control and that I didn’t fucking care anymore. So Dad came and got her and took her home, and three days later she attempted to smash her (perfectly fine) knee through the screen door of their patio. So there’s an element of truth to the official story because she tore the crap out of her knee. I’m not sure about the recovering part. I take it as a good sign that she didn’t try to put her knee through the glass door of the patio. Nothing crucial got torn, but she did require stitches.
I don’t know exactly what Gwen is recovering from, right now, or if the word “recovering” is appropriate. It makes it sound like she is getting new upholstery. From what I gather, they are tryin
g “different things,” which I assume means different drugs. This tone I am taking about the condition of my poor anguished shredded sister is sort of sick, and might possibly mean that I should be on the same regimen of pharmaceuticals as she is.
Was she out of control? Did I really not fucking care anymore? These are difficult questions to answer.
You know, there is one thing that is never quite explained in any synopsis of Swan Lake. That is: what’s the real deal with Odile, the Black Swan? I mean, what is her MO? We’re meant to believe she is Von Rothbart’s daughter whom he has transformed to look exactly like Odette, but does she retain any of her own personality? Is she just a pawn? Is she evil? Misguided? Jealous? A victim? Certainly she never displays any remorse over her part in the tragedy that follows, but we leave her as soon as the big denouement. So we don’t really know what she feels.
Who will weep for the Black Swan when the spell is lifted and all the white swans are set free? All our tears are for Odette, noble, self-sacrificing, fatally tricked, and now dead in the arms of her lover.
But the Black Swan is still alive. Fluttering her midnight wings without conviction on the edges of the lake. Having to live with the knowledge of what she has done, what she allowed to happen. All alone.
Oh my god my neck is killing me.
2.
The day that Gwen put her knee through the patio door was also the day that my boyfriend broke up with me. In a surprise reversal of the usual cliché, Andrew told me that he was “in love” with me but he didn’t “love” me. It may have been the most original thing he ever said to me, and for a moment I was almost proud of him. Then came the rest: how he just wanted to “be there” for me but I shut myself off from him, never let him in, didn’t communicate, didn’t seem really interested in building a life together. He followed this up with a catalog of all the things he had done for me that I hadn’t appreciated.
I should have known better. When Andrew and I got together he kept telling me how incredible it was to be with someone who wasn’t all needy, didn’t have a ton of issues, was really independent. So unlike all his other girlfriends, especially Anna, his tragically doomed first love who overdosed when they were sophomores at Columbia. I should have known there was trouble the minute I heard about Anna. Never date a guy with a dead girlfriend. Because she will get to be peacefully (or however it happens) deceased, but the guy will be left alive to romanticize her out of all proportion and forever seek another flawed heroine to save.
But I shouldn’t blame Anna. Probably the reason Andrew was with her in the first place is that Andrew is a giver. Givers are sneaky. If you don’t present them with gaping holes, they will create them just to have something to do. Here’s the twist: although the givers get quite a bit of cred for how caring and generous they are, their motives are far from altruistic. The whole time they are giving and giving, you can be sure that they’re secretly keeping an account book of services rendered and waiting for just the right moment to hand you the bill.
During the breakup talk Andrew said he thought it best if we separated before anger and resentment set in, although from the length and fluid hostility of his monologue it was clearly too late for that. He said I could take my time moving out, but maybe I could stay at Gwen’s since she was currently in Michigan recovering from knee/psyche implosion. And oh, yes, since I asked, there was someone else, but that had nothing to do with his decision, which wasn’t really his decision, but rather something that was forced upon him by my behavior.
“I just want to be honest with you,” he said.
“That does not impress me,” I replied.
Our apartment was Andrew’s apartment, so it made sense that I would be the one to move out. This didn’t take long. I came to him with very little, like a mail-order bride from the Ukraine. Well, I was living with Gwen before I moved in with Andrew and it would have felt wrong to take any of our joint furniture or things. I already felt guilty enough for leaving her alone.
There were things I bought for Andrew and me as a couple, but I left those for him and the mysterious “someone else” to enjoy. I hope her no doubt fascinatingly vulnerable self will be very comfortable on those Egyptian cotton sheets. Yes, before decamping I really did spray my perfume on the pillowcases. Also, all over his suits. He might not even notice. He was never good at reading my signals. He always wanted me to tell him everything.
I packed up my books and clothes and a few pathetic boxes and I hired one of those “man with a van” guys to move it all for me, and now here I am. When Dad came he must have thrown some of Gwen’s clothes in a suitcase, and her toothbrush and contact lens case aren’t in the bathroom, but everything else is just where she left it, including the masking-tape Xs on some of the walls. (Don’t ask me to explain, it’s a Gwen thing, I don’t know what it means.) Also Clive isn’t here. Gwen’s neighbor is taking care of him. That she didn’t ask me to look after her cat is another sign of how furious she is with me.
My boxes are lined up against the bedroom wall. “Sweaters,” “Kitchen,” “Reviews/Programs/Photos,” “Fiction A–F.” It doesn’t make sense to unpack and I don’t want to disturb anything. It’s a bit like living in a crime scene, actually, with the Xs and all.
I need to take those down.
I don’t want to touch them.
My neck still hurt like a bitch today, and since I wasn’t supposed to be performing tonight, I decided to skip morning class and do therapy.
First I went to see Dr. Ken to get an adjustment. Dr. Ken makes house calls to the theater three times a week when we are in season, but today wasn’t one of those days. He’ll always squeeze us in at the office, though.
Dr. Ken’s waiting room is covered with pictures of the well-known individuals he has cracked to health: opera singers, boxers, dancers, musicians, and hockey players. Dr. Ken once said to me that ballet dancers are his favorite patients to treat, because we always do what we are told, and are very open to criticism. At the time Dr. Ken said this, I was facedown on the table and attached to an electric stimulation machine, so I just grunted affably, but I must say that upon reflection, being able to tell us that we aren’t great seems kind of a fucked-up reason for liking us.
Dr. Ken wears polo shirts and pants with pleats in them. He has that smooth hair that doesn’t look like hair, but rather a sort of fibrous cap. I’m not at all attracted to Dr. Ken, what with the pleats and all, but he’s a man, and I did my girl thing anyway, as if him finding me charming or attractive would help. Help what? I don’t know. You do these things.
He probed my neck for a few minutes and then said he wanted to do X-rays and that I have “a lot going on in there.” But today we just had time for an adjustment. It’s tricky having your neck adjusted. For it to work you have to totally relax, but it’s hard to relax when the movements of the chiropractor are remarkably similar to those of the Boston Strangler.
I asked Dr. Ken if having a pinched nerve in your neck will affect your peripheral vision, and he asked me why, was I experiencing that? The thing is, I keep anticipating that something is going to come around a corner and stab me in the eye. Seriously, for the past few weeks, every time I go around a corner, on the street, or in the hallways at work, I want to jerk my head back and cover my eyes. I don’t though. In fact, I have been forcing myself to take corners quickly and sharply to sort of punish myself for getting neurotic. This started before the neck injury, so I told Dr. Ken no, that I had read something online, and he told me that I shouldn’t do that.
I’m sure there is some deep dark secret reason behind the stabbed-in-the-eye scenario, but really, I don’t see how knowing why I have this fear will help stop it. That’s why I don’t see any point in going to a shrink. Knowing why you broke the glass—because you weren’t paying attention to where the edge of the table was, dummy—doesn’t make you less sorry, doesn’t mend the glass, doesn’t ensure it won’t happen again, that you won’t break something more precious next time. The shrink mi
ght say that actually you knew perfectly well where the edge of the table was, but you chose to miss and break the glass because you wanted to sabotage yourself or something, but please. That’s like saying drug addicts are sabotaging themselves. Hello! Drugs are fantastic and you get addicted because they are fantastic and it’s just bad luck that they can destroy you too.
I’ve read how there were so many women in Vienna talking about how they were sexually abused as children that Sigmund Freud wondered if there were some kind of child molestation epidemic going on. But no. The trouble was that even though these women hadn’t been abused, they so thoroughly believed that it had happened that they exhibited all the symptoms of legitimate victims. So for all intents and purposes, they had been abused. Which would piss me off if I were a legitimate victim, and makes you wonder what exactly the point is of having any actual experiences if you can be just as affected by imaginary ones.
Nobody hit Gwen, or molested her, or anything like that, nor does she claim they did. Even when she’s acting delusional and paranoid she doesn’t say that. She knows her limits. She usually knows mine. Now I’m worried that she’s deliberately acting crazy just to prove something to me. But that she smashed her own knee is … well. I called Dad because I was worried that she was going to harm herself, and that ended up happening anyway.
After Dr. Ken, I took the subway downtown to Dr. Wang for acupuncture.
Dr. Wang doesn’t have any pictures of us on his walls, and as far as I know has never even been to the ballet. I explained about my neck and he took my pulse in about ten different places. His hands are hard but so incredibly smooth that I imagine his fingerprints to be without lines or ridges, just perfectly uniform ovals like the backs of small spoons. Sometimes Dr. Wang will ask questions or dispense wisdom, but today he just took my pulse and then did his tapping thing. He taps your whole body with his spoon fingers and when he finds a spot that interests him, he sticks a needle in. The first one went into my left hand, which made my right leg jump.