The Cranes Dance

by Meg Howrey

  Our parents did understand about these things, but the thought of us trooping off to New York City was pushing it a little. All alone: two teenagers? There was no academic program affiliated with dance training, how would we finish high school? And where would we live? Other kids do it, we explained to them on the phone from Boston. Well, I explained. Gwen and I had a system for getting what we wanted, playing to our strengths. I would lay the groundwork with diplomacy, reason, and conviction. Gwen was the closer. At the critical moment she would step forward with something about “achieving our dream.”

  “They may not want us, but if they do then we can’t pass up the opportunity,” I explained. “This is about our whole careers.”

  “It’s just like tennis,” I said, firmly. “This is like … junior Wimbledon.”

  At that time our parents were largely occupied with our younger brother Keith, at twelve a bona fide tennis prodigy. (“Such gifted children!” people would say to my parents, who would respond with “We’re just happy they are finding things that interest them,” in this mildly corrective way.) Keith’s talents took more parenting than ours. Not only did Mom and Dad have to constantly shuttle him around to tournaments and clinics, but every two months or so Keith would decide that he hated tennis and would quit in some very theatrical way (like, on court during the middle of a match). Gwen and I, of course, were paradigms of dedication and self-discipline. Neither of our parents could understand disinclination to perfectionism. They were truly baffled by Keith. They never told him he had to stick with tennis, but I think Keith was mostly upset by the clear inference that tennis would have to be replaced by something else, and whatever that was would demand dedication and focus too. Otherwise, what was the point of doing anything?

  “It’s different for you,” Keith once huffed at me, as I tried to explain to him that a life spent reading X-Men comic books and riding his dirt bike into ditches would not be very fulfilling. “You and Gwen,” Keith rolled his eyes, “actually like, love ballet.”

  Was there a magical love-of-the-dance moment, when the muse Terpsichore called to us and we lifted our arms and spun, at one with the divine music of the Universe? I think not. Although pride and obsession can feel like love, I guess.

  We started ballet when we were little. I was five and Gwen not quite four. If left to her own devices Mom might have chosen karate or soccer, but we were girly girls, and although it probably pained her she took our demands for all things pink and beribboned and princessy in stride. Plus the local ballet school was next to the local tennis club, which meant Mom could drop us off on her way to ladies’ doubles. Right away we were very good at it, and you like what you are good at, and being better than other people at something is fun. Is that love?

  By the time we had grown out of the pink princess stage we were too good at ballet to think about whether or not we loved it. That Keith should bring “love” into the equation seemed extremely petulant, not to mention ridiculous. Why would he just want to be a “regular” kid? Where was the power in that? It was like when people talked to us about how disciplined we were to “give up” things, as if giving things up was really a sacrifice. Abstention, self-control, self-inflicted pain: these are forms of power—about the only kind you can have when you’re a fourteen-year-old girl, by the way.

  But Keith was more like us than he let on. He complained and threw tantrums and racquets but he kept going back to tennis anyway. And now when he gives interviews he talks about how he’s always had a great love for the game and that it’s this love that has always pushed him through the pain and frustration and gotten him where he is. (Number 12 in the world, according to current ATP rankings.) I don’t give him a hard time about making these sorts of statements. I say the same kind of fatuous crap whenever I give interviews too.

  Anyway, eventually a compromise was reached about going to New York. I was sixteen and entering my senior year of high school. If I got accepted into the company school (and received a scholarship) I could go. Gwen, still a junior and a young one at that, would have to wait a year.

  Strangely, Gwen took this very calmly.

  “I’m not sure I want to leave home yet anyway,” she said.

  “What do you mean? Why not? Why would you want to stay at home?” I was incredulous. Not that we didn’t have a nice family, but we were talking the difference between New York City and suburban Michigan! And who wouldn’t want to go to the most elite school for ballet in the country, practically the world? It’s not like we had some intriguing social life going at high school. We each had about three non-dancing friends, people we sat with at lunch who knew better than to ask us to anything after school or offer baked goods. Mostly we took class, so why not do it at the best place possible? And we could get out of regular school, which for me was intensely boring, and for Gwen a little difficult.

  “It’s just one year,” Gwen said. “I can wait a year.”

  “I probably won’t get in,” I said, although I fully expected to. I (we) had always gotten in. I (we) had always gotten full scholarships.

  I auditioned. Got in, full scholarship. The company school gave my name to a member of their board who had offered to house a promising out-of-town student in her apartment. This woman—Wendy Griston Hedges—called our house and (thankfully) spoke to my father, who did not ask (as Mom would have) if I should bring my own sheets and was meal service included.

  “Interesting woman,” my dad reported. “A Schubert enthusiast.”

  My English teacher found a correspondence course that I could finish my last few school credits with. Someone from the local newspaper came and “interviewed” me. My picture ran next to the header: “Local Girl Dances Her Way to the Big Apple.” I was described: self-possessed and graceful (well, obviously) with a steely-eyed determination and discipline (are you saying I seem bitchy?). Keith was mentioned: a very gifted young tennis player (“That’s weird that they didn’t put my ranking”—Keith). My younger sibling was duly noted: Gwen Crane has been with her older sister through every step, leap, and twirl and hopes to also study at the prestigious New York school (Oh my god, seriously, twirl? We’re not retarded), which led to a ridiculous concluding sentence: But for now, Kate Crane is taking on the big city for a solo number (suddenly we’re in a 1940s musical). I found this well-intentioned but ludicrous article intensely embarrassing.

  I was on a plane to New York City before I even had time to get nervous. And then the plane landed. And it was just me and eight million strangers. Disoriented, I immediately shifted into the technique I had developed ever since Miss Pat had instructed us to “always imagine an audience is watching you, even when it’s just class.” At that time (eight years old? nine?) I hadn’t been before a lot of audiences, but I had seen a movie where people were watched with a surveillance camera, so that’s what I thought of. It’s a good trick. And you can vary who the audience is, whether it’s behavioral scientist types who are studying you, or maybe like, a general TV viewership. Or your ex-boyfriend who needs to see how ridiculously awesome and sexy you are. Or the kids who were mean to you in grade school who are now fat and married and bored and need to see how ridiculously awesome and sexy you are. The point is, there are a lot of options. At that time I liked to imagine I was being judged by a movie audience that was comparing me to other sixteen-year-olds. (Other sixteen-year-olds: lame, bored, and boring. Me: sophisticated, exceptional, and intriguingly thoughtful.)

  With this in mind, I managed to make it with relative sangfroid to the taxi stand and give the driver Wendy Griston Hedges’s address—typewritten, laminated, and all but stapled to my chest by Mom.

  This was 1995 and the dormitory for the school had not been built yet. The student body, mostly from somewhere outside of New York City, had to scramble for accommodations as best they could. Many came with a mother who had left husband, job, even other children in order to squeeze self and dancing son or daughter into a furnished studio sublet, five locks on the door, furniture that
needed to be moved before you could pull the futon out. More enterprising moms rented slightly larger apartments, advertising bedroom-to-share or pullout couch in living room on the school’s call-board. Dancers were packed into these one- or two-bedrooms, names written into the waistbands of tights to prevent confusion on the shower rod, where at least six pairs hung at any given time. Additionally there were New Yorkers connected to the school or the company in some way—donors, board members, the philanthropic elite—who took in a student or two, offering the Laura Ashley–sheeted bed of a daughter recently departed to Vassar, an unoccupied maid’s room, a never-used guest room because the rich rarely have a guest importunate enough to demand lodging. But these were not numerous and so I was more lucky than I knew to have landed Wendy Griston Hedges and her Upper East Side apartment.

  I tried to make a good impression on my movie audience judges as the taxi jolted through the decidedly unglamorous approach to New York City. It was difficult because I was carsick. Was this Harlem? What if this wasn’t Harlem but where I was going to be living? This wasn’t much better than Detroit! Where were all the fancy places? Finally, I noticed a sign: 110th Street. Okay, well that gave it thirty-six blocks to improve, which thankfully, it soon did. And then it became wonderful. It was love at first brownstone and I immediately turned traitor. I would no longer be from Michigan. I was from New York. Kate Crane: New Yorker.

  The taxi stopped in front of an old-fashioned Park Avenue building with a doorman. The doorman took me up in the elevator and tried to talk to me, but Kate Crane New Yorker was filled with crippling anxiety about whether or not she should tip him, and if so, how much. Mindful of my invisible audience I pulled my wallet out of my purse and held it stagily, but then pretended to forget about it and get caught up in my bags. Wendy Griston Hedges was waiting for me at the apartment door.

  Shit, I can’t remember what Wendy looked like to me then. Probably because I was involved in the whole doorman thing and wanting to be perfect for my judges and hoping, as I always do, that people will not talk to me until I make up my mind about them. But Wendy hasn’t changed much in the past eleven years, so I’ll just go ahead and describe her: five feet ten inches bowed slightly forward, the posture of a woman who has been loved, but maybe not very well, by people much smaller than herself. Hair colored cranberry by a criminally negligent stylist on the Upper East Side, who, after achieving a juice-like maroon glaze, lightly mows the thing into an irregular orb. Bright blue eyes, very white skin, impressionistic maquillage. Back then I probably would have said that she was dressed “normally,” without any idea that the blouse, the cardigan, the slacks were Mainbocher, and collectively more expensive than my dad’s car.

  That day, Wendy Griston Hedges let me into her apartment but neglected to give me a tour of it and for several months I had absolutely no idea of its actual size. She led me through the foyer directly into a dining room that I would only once eat in, and through that into a narrow kitchen. “Here is the kitchen,” Wendy said. I nodded. “Can you cook for yourself?” she asked anxiously. “Oh yes,” I said. I never had, all on my own, but I didn’t want my movie audience to know that, or worry Wendy, who seemed just as nervous and uncertain as I was. From the kitchen we progressed into a hallway lined with doors. Wendy eyed the doors as if she weren’t totally confident of their contents. “Here is your bathroom,” Wendy said, opening one cautiously. There was no shower, and I would have to attach a spray hose to the tub three days later, which was a great nuisance and always fell off. “Here is your bedroom,” Wendy said, gaining courage and leading me to the end of the hall. The room had a full-size bed in it with about ten upholstered pillows banking the headboard. The curtains were held back with gold tassels. I remember those details because they were the kind of “decorator” touches that I associated with rich people. On our beds back home we just had the pillows you used for sleeping, and our curtains were just the regular drapes that you pulled apart with cords.

  “Do you know how to get to the school?” Wendy asked. “Yes,” I said, although I did not. “Let’s see … what else?” Wendy sidled back into the hallway and waved a hand at the Oriental runner. We looked at each other helplessly. Basic social skills were beyond me. I had never spent much time with an adult who was not a teacher or a friend’s mom. “I’m fine,” I assured her. I probably did not say “Thank you.” Wendy told me she’d let me settle in the way people on the phone say “I’ll let you go.” As soon as she left, for the benefit of my movie audience I pretended to discover my wallet in my hand and pantomimed distress at not tipping the doorman. Later I tiptoed down the hallway into the kitchen, found a phone book with maps, and spent two hours figuring out where in New York I actually was.

  I was fine, mostly. I located the Gristedes the next day and purchased cereal, carrot sticks, boxes of raisins, yogurt, Melba toast, and all manner of Lean Cuisines. For the entire year, I did not so much as scramble an egg in the kitchen. Sometimes, as a treat, I got an Entenmann’s Low-Fat Raspberry Strudel and ate most of the entire thing in one sitting, carrying the remains in my dance bag to dispose of in an anonymous trash receptacle on the way to class.

  To get to the school I had to either walk across Central Park or take a bus that cut through it. Nervous of both, the first time I decided to walk, giving myself two hours to make it across. I could see the buildings of where I needed to go above the tree-tops, but the paths were curved, and I didn’t want to venture into any of the low tunnels, most of which contained huddled forms of homeless people and reeked of urine, even from a safe distance. I all but ran across the park and made it to the school in thirty minutes, drenched in sweat and thoroughly freaked out. I was eager to get into something safe and familiar, like ballet class.

  I wasn’t afraid of stepping into a class of strangers. I wasn’t afraid of competition. I had always been the best in the room, or if not the best, then so much younger than everybody else that it was remarkable I was even there. It had always been like that although my confidence had been a little bit shaken over the summer at Boston Ballet because I was now sixteen. To be amazing at sixteen is not as amazing as being amazing at fourteen. This was very clear to me because I had spent eight weeks listening to people tell me how uh-mazing Gwen was and overhearing things like Can you believe that girl Gwen, she’s only fourteen! She’s a diva. And only fourteen! Fourteen years old, doesn’t that make you sick? But I still got a lot of attention. I still was envied and hated and courted. And Gwen was back home (turning fifteen, by the way) and I was here. This was my moment.

  By the end of the first class my confidence had taken a second and larger hit. For the first time in my life I was surrounded by versions of myself. They were all the best girls in the room. They were all the girls that always got in, always got the full scholarship, the good part. They were all my age and they were all amazing. I was in a class of me, times fourteen. It was profoundly unsettling.

  Our main teacher was Madame Dombrovski, who appeared to date from early-nineteenth-century Russia and after thirty years in America could still only speak about a dozen words or phrases in English. Oddly, one of them was “ice cream” which she used to describe things both bad and good. “Guhls (shudder, pained expression), your feet like … ice cream. Make better.” Or “Guhls (puckering of her tiny rosebud lips), make arms nice like ice cream.” She called me Katya. She was always dressed in black with thick, soft snow boots on her feet. There was a rumor (unverified) that her ankles had been broken by the KGB when she tried to defect. She didn’t demonstrate combinations but muttered in French what she wanted us to do, or used her forearms and hands, standard practice in ballet class, but sometimes it was hard to believe that she was seriously asking us to do those impossible things. Her class was devastatingly hard. During grande allegro she scurried behind and shoved if we were not moving big enough. She also slapped, swatted, and pinched. Sometimes she would watch and then roll her eyes and walk away, muttering ominous Russian things that sounded like
“Plutzchushni donya snyat.” This always sounded far more horrible than the standard horrible things other teachers said in English.

  Our other main teacher was Dana Gopnick—a too recently retired soloist from the company who barely noticed us at all, so intent was she on following her own still capable image in the mirror. Everyone professed to “love” her, but nobody really did. Her one main insult: “Well, you can always quit and go have babies” did not resonate particularly. None of us was going to quit, and there was already a woman in the company who had a baby and continued dancing. Dana wore full ballet attire for class: leotard, tights, flowered skirt, a shellacked French twist to her hair, painted-in eyebrows, and liquid eyeliner. She wanted all of us to look up to and emulate her, but I considered her to be a cautionary tale. For excessive eyebrow tweezing, if nothing else.

  Of the fourteen other girls in my class, five had been at the school for their entire training, and the rest had been there for at least two years. I was the only new girl. This was the top level of the school and conditions were tense. After this year, selections would be made about who would get into the company and who would not. My late wild-card entry into the game was not welcomed.

  By the end of my first week at the school I was deeply embroiled in class competition and speculation, which intensified as the year continued. Gradually, the fourteen versions of me began to separate into distinct entities and I was able to spot weaknesses. Suzanne was prone to injury. Laurel had great feet and legs, but her technique was weak, Paula’s eating disorder was a little out of control. Shin-Li might not have enough “presence,” none of the teachers seemed to really like Jenny for some reason, and Noelle was just a little too tall. Mara, Tarine, and Rachel were maybe the best of the best. Rachel was maybe the best of those three, but four months into the year she dislocated her hip in a truly god-awful way—in class—much screaming—and went home to Santa Fe. She returned near the end of the year, and struggled tearfully for a month before leaving again. We all said we felt so bad for her.