by Meg Howrey
“What is it with this ACL?” Irina demanded. “We never have ACL before. Now it’s oh, my ACL, my ACL. I think this made-up thing by doctors. Like ADD. We don’t have anybody in Russia with ADD. Nobody have ACL. Don’t tell me you have ACL because this is not real thing.”
“I rotate vertebrae,” I say, because after two seconds in her presence, I too start dropping my pronouns and articles.
“Of course, shit, no,” she says. “Lie down.”
I’m not entirely certain Iri is really a licensed massage therapist. Her cousin Dmitri is one of our rehearsal pianists, and he got her the job. Over the past six years I’ve heard most of her life history and she’s never mentioned any kind of massage school. Iri was a gymnast in Russia back when it was the Soviet Union and had one of those incredible childhoods like you hear about when they profile Eastern European athletes during the Olympics: the two-room apartment shared with parents and grandparents; the mother mopping floors; the hours spent searching for a store that carried milk. Iri tore her Achilles tendon and missed the Olympics, but she ended up marrying her coach and “everybody life get better.” Her husband, Yuri, managed to get visas to come to the U.S. and now he runs a fancy gymnastic training facility in New Jersey. Iri helps out at the gym, but Yuri “makes me so crazy, I don’t even know,” so she prefers to work at the ballet. I assume the kind of massage technique she uses on us is what was used on her in 1980s Moscow: a mixture of extreme stretching and what can only be described as thumping. It’s terrifically painful and fabulous. Like most Russian women she is full of practical relationship advice that only works if you are dealing with another Russian: “Of course, when I want something, like new refrigerator, I tell my husband, ‘I think your idea is good and we should get new refrigerator,’ and he say, ‘Eh?’ and I say, ‘Yes, yes, at first I think you were wrong and we not need this thing, but now I see you were right and so maybe yes,’ and even though he never say these things about refrigerator now he say, ‘I told you this was right thing,’ and ‘You should listen to me, Iri,’ and I say, ‘Yes, yes, you were right,’ and he go to store and bring me refrigerator next day.”
I’m not sure “passive aggressive” translates into Russian. They are too credulous and too crafty for such noodling about. A direct appeal to the ego is totally fair play. Masking your strength is just good politics. If you get what you want in the end, who cares who was right?
“So,” said Irina, pressing a thumb forged with Soviet steel into my neck, “how is Mr. Boyfriend?”
“Oh, I didn’t tell you?” I mumbled, wondering if it’s possible for cervical vertebrae to be ejected out of your eyeball. “We broke up.”
“Whaaaaat?” Irina moved her thumb slightly and I visualized the yam in my neck breaking in two. “How this happen?”
I was emotionally withholding. I made him insecure because I wasn’t needy. I rewarded his efforts to “be there” for me with sullen hauteur. I reacted to intimations of marriage/children with disdain. I didn’t try to kill myself. I demystified sex in the splits.
“He cheated on me,” I said to Irina.
Her hands paused.
“He tell you, or you find out?”
“He tell me.”
“And you do what? Leave?”
“Um … yeah.”
Iri sighed and resumed her Vulcan death grip on my neck.
“He wants to be with her,” I explained, through my teeth.
“He don’t know what he want,” Iri snorted. “But you don’t know what you want either, so it’s better little time away. Just remember. Nobody dance forever.”
Irina has an eleven-year-old daughter, Alisa, who is, of course, a gymnast, and on track to get on the U.S. Olympic team. Iri has a corkboard nailed up in her cubicle covered with pictures of her daughter coiled around a variety of apparatuses, each rib sharply etched through her Lycra leotard as she arches toward … what? A gold medal? Her father’s approval? Her mother’s love?
A gymnast’s career is even shorter than ours. You can have the whole business wrapped up and done with by the time you are twenty and ready to go to college and deal with the fact that your body now resembles that of a very muscular gnome. I think athletes operate under the same basic motivating principles as us. You may start off dashing toward the vault and wanting to stick that triple twist double flip so Daddy will say “Good job” or so you will win or so your double flip will be better than little Susie’s, your rival with the swinging blond ponytail and a better leotard than yours, but at some point, maybe even mid-twist, as it were, none of that matters. At some point you did something perfectly and now your whole life is a search to re-create that. This is your doom, your bloody pact with the devil. Because while all other motivating factors are either attainable or surmountable, BEING PERFECT will never—not ever—happen for any length of time that will prove satisfying.
My brother is lucky. He at least gets moments where he knows he won. Also, he’s a freaking millionaire.
After leaving Iri and her magic rs, I had to go down to the third floor to pick up my shoe order, and I passed the studio where the school kids were rehearsing Dream.
Marius’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream will close the season for us, and it’s a world premiere, so there will be much fanfare, for the handful of people still interested in these things. I think he’s done a fantastic job with it, but there are a host of problems with turning complicated stories into ballets. (Romeo and Juliet would be an exception. I would argue that the ballet is better than the play. If you disagree, it’s only because you’ve never seen the balcony scene pas de deux or you are made of igneous rock.)
There are some obvious things that shouldn’t be made into ballets, like the life of Louis B. Pasteur or shark attacks. But a tale of warring fairies and love potions gone awry seems like it would be an easy match. Unfortunately, any story ballet is going to need pantomime and require acting, and here’s where we run into trouble. You try coming up with a very clear and specific gesture that indicates “Hey, why don’t you sprinkle the juice of that flower into the eyeballs of these characters” or “I’m really attached to this changeling child and you can’t have him” and you will see what I mean.
Also there is the problem of Mendelssohn’s score. For Felix, fairies translated musically into extremely fast twittering tempi, and it’s hard to dance to without looking as if you’re on crack. Like Balanchine, Marius has incorporated some other Mendelssohn works to flesh out a full-length ballet, but I find most of his music sort of academic and perfunctory.
Marius was smart, though, because he also borrowed Balanchine’s idea of using young students to fill out the ranks of the fairies, and they are very touching to watch. The school rehearses the crap out of them and they are totally psyched to be onstage with us.
The girls are ten and eleven years old, so for many of them Dream is the last time dancing onstage will be so pure—dancing at all, really. Round about next year the competition will start getting fiercer, their bodies will start changing, and the simple delight in just whipping around as fast as you can and wearing your hair in a pretty way will be over. Little girls are romantic. We learn quickly though, how to suffer, how to endure suffering. By the time a little girl has become a young woman she has learned how dangerous a thing it is to Dream.
I watched them through the studio window for a little bit. There is a girl in this class, Bryce, who during Nutcracker last season shyly waited outside my dressing room and asked me to sign a pair of pointe shoes for her. Lots of girls do this, but Bryce told me I was her favorite dancer in the company. Mostly the kids only look up to the big stars around here, so I was inordinately pleased by this.
Bryce’s face lit up when she saw me and I waved at her and she looked proudly at her friends to make sure they saw her being singled out by a company member. I don’t know whether to hope she is incredibly talented or not.
In the rehearsal studio, Bryce ran to her spot. She raised up her arms and fluttered her fingers as she has been ta
ught to do. She turned in place as fast as she could, as fast as any little girl can turn. You could see her counting the beats in the music under her breath. Her hair came loose from a pin and whipped up into the air, but she kept her balance. She already knows how to turn. You must pick one spot to focus on and look at it while your body is turning until the last possible second, and then whip your head around to find the spot again.
Bryce has never had a neck injury, or an injury of any kind. If she has been in love already it will be remembered fondly, if at all, when other greater loves have come and gone. She has not thought about the middle or the end of her life. She is not as tall now as she will be, nor as beautiful. She has not thought her first cynical thought. She does not appear to have a sister.
I grabbed my shoe order and hustled myself to Dream rehearsal, only to find out that Justin, who is my Demetrius, was at the doctor’s having his knee looked at. Partnerless, I sat in the front of the studio and watched Nina, one of our ballet mistresses, rehearse Lawrence and Yumi, who are Cast B for Helena/Demetrius. Behind them, moving less fully so as not to take up studio space, were two new kids in the company, Klaus and Maya, who are learning the roles in case everybody else is struck down. Unofficially, we call this the “Plague Cast.” Nina was counting the music aloud using her preferred form of musical interpretation: the deedle. “And a-deedle-deedle FOUR and a-deedle-deedle SIX.” It’s enough to make one insane. I’m no fan of Mendelssohn’s score, but Nina and her deedles are even worse.
Nina stopped the rehearsal to harp on Yumi’s turn-out. “Yes, but it’s not modern, dear. We still have to turn out. The supporting leg too. It’s not just about being cute. We still have to dance with at least a little technique.”
Yumi has been told she needs to work on her turn-out her whole life. I’m sure she did all kinds of torturous things to herself in school to try to improve it. She is a gorgeous dancer; she has great feet and legs. They just don’t turn out naturally, and Nina being so condescending about it completely shut down anything free or spontaneous in Yumi’s dancing and she got all strained and stiff looking. You can see these things really clearly from the front of the room. While this was going on, I sewed ribbons on my shoes. When someone is getting berated in rehearsal, the polite thing to do is to look like you aren’t seeing or hearing it. What I wanted to do was take over the rehearsal. Nina has that old-school break-you-down approach, and that doesn’t work with everyone. I could get Yumi to turn out without making her feel like crap.
I coached Gwen a lot. Right from the beginning, even when she was in the school. I’ve coached Gwen all through her career. Not on her technique, necessarily. Gwen is a phenom. It’s not really possible to dance as well as she dances. On my best day ever I am really, really good, but I’m never that good.
But I could be helpful to Gwen in some ways. I could say, “Let your head fall back there,” or “Stay looking at him for two more steps back and then turn away, but let your left hand trail behind you, no, break the wrist, that’s it, more, better, good.”
And I could talk and talk and talk to her about Giselle, and Juliet, and Sleeping Beauty, and while I was talking I could tell I had her, you know, I was filling her up, making it real. Because even if I couldn’t do it myself, I knew how it could be done. I could see it so clearly in my mind. And then I could see it right in front of me, because there would always be a moment when Gwen would see what I was seeing and she could make it happen.
It’s not something I can do for myself, though. I sometimes wish I had a me for me, if you know what I mean. Maybe then … well.
You know, if I danced almost anywhere else but here I might be a principal dancer. If I went to Philly, or Cleveland, or Boston? I might dance Odette/Odile, and Juliet, and Giselle. Might. Maybe. It’s hard to say just now because I’ve kind of lost track of where I am, but definitely this used to be the case.
But it’s too late now. I’d always know the truth. My stardom would be conditional. How could I have the balls to step forward and accept roses and ovations at the end of Swan Lake when I know that I am only wearing the crown because I have shrunk my Lake down to a manageable size? Odette, Queen of the Puddle.
I’m not really clear on what it is I am supposed to do now.
Oh yeah, what I should do is focus on myself now, right? Get out from under my sister’s shadow? Spread my wings and learn to fly? Fuck you.
Now don’t get excited. I’m not crazy. I know this because although I keep talking and talking to you, I don’t really imagine that you are saying anything back. I like how quiet you are, which allows me to go on performing.
• • •
After rehearsal I met Mara for a chat and a bite to eat. Another ritual. You can trace the trajectories of our lives through the progression of our “bites.” First they were blueberry muffins toasted with butter, or chocolate croissants. A once-a-week treat. Then it was whole-wheat toast. Then fruit salad. Now it’s usually just tea lattes. Green tea for the antioxidants. Soy milk. So it’s really more of a deterioration than a progression.
But I’m grateful that Mara and I have more or less kept our friendship intact. It hasn’t always been easy. I know she thinks that Gwen and I have a fucked-up relationship. I know she would take my side if I ever complained about Gwen, which is one of the reasons I never do. There’s also the difference in our careers.
Something happened to us both in our first year in the company. What happened with Mara was that she went on for an injured girl in Giselle with only five minutes’ notice. The girl’s position downstage left meant that Mara had to reverse every step from her own position upstage right, and reverse every swirly corps traffic pattern, and in some cases move eight counts earlier in the music than she was used to, or four counts later. She didn’t make a single mistake. This sealed her fate. Mara became “dependable” and “useful.” The girl you could go to in any jam, the girl who could teach incoming corps girls the choreography. It changed her. I mean physically changed her. She has become more square, more solid looking. Inasmuch as an underweight ballerina can look substantial, she looks substantial. She no longer makes fun of herself, and is only occasionally sarcastic. It’s not good when you feel you can no longer afford to be self-deprecating.
What happened to me in our first year was that I was given the second cast lead in a new ballet, a world premiere, by an important German choreographer. Being second cast meant that I would get to dance all the matinees and the Wednesday nights. A huge honor for a new girl.
The ballet was called Those Who Are Left Behind. Very modern, which in dance tends to mean no pointe shoes and everyone wearing drab costumes in colors like mustard and olive, and lifts where you’re held by something odd, like your knee. I played the role of a young girl whose fiancé must go off and join the military (green tunics with black sashes) because there is War. The village of the girl is then destroyed by the attacking army (all in puce with beige sashes), after which she is forced into prostitution (red sash) to save her family. At the end, the soldier returns, but the girl is too ashamed and broken to face him. War has killed their love (and, apparently, wiped out the supply of sashes). In the last moment of the ballet, I had a little limping step that carried me downstage away from my soldier love. Then I had to pause, begin to turn around, decide not to, then limp slowly offstage. A moment that the New York Times would say “contained all the pathos, the loss, the brutality of war itself. This is the new dancer to watch.”
It wasn’t a great ballet—the little meaningful gestures were not terribly original, the music was on the wrong side of atonal, and the sashes were a bloody nuisance—but I loved it anyway. I had hung on every word the choreographer said during rehearsals and read books set during World War II to try to get myself “into” the role. I thought about it all the time, although I suspect that the little limping movement at the end of the ballet had more to do with the pathos of my own ambition than the pathos of war. But I had that moment onstage, that moment when yo
u’re not thinking about steps, and you’re not counting music, and dance—real dance—comes out of your body and you are extraordinary and it is beyond any small, dull word like “happiness” or “satisfaction.” You make the gods jealous in such a moment, I suppose.
To keep the gods from destroying me, I’ve held on to my sarcasm and my self-deprecation. And they’ve become my alibi for whenever it occurs to me that I have not quite become the person I wanted to be. I suppose I do have rivals in the company, but none of them is as challenging as the ever-present, alternate version of me: always one giant unreachable step ahead. And then there’s Gwen. Even with a splintered knee and god knows what swirling around in her head, she will be forever better than messy, middling me, and we both know it.
When I got to Café Margot later this afternoon, Mara had a table and was flipping through a brochure.
“Columbia,” she said, turning it over so I could see the cover. “They have that program for performing artists? I’m thinking of taking some classes.”
“Really?” I dumped my bag in the extra chair, on top of Mara’s bag. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Mike and I have been talking about it. I’ve also been thinking about … you know.… maybe. Having a kid.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“I know, I know,” Mara said. “But I feel something changing in me. It’s weird.”
“Actually, it’s natural, right? It’s a normal thing for a woman? To want to have a baby? I feel like I read that somewhere.”
Mara laughed and put her elbows on the table, cupping her chin with one hand. She’s got the mother of all diamond rings. Her husband, Mike, is a hedge fund dude. He and Andrew really bonded over the whole “being an outsider in the ballet world” thing. At gala events they would beeline for each other. I think Mike was more upset than I was that Andrew and I broke up. And that’s another thing that keeps things cool with Mara and me, I guess. I may be a soloist, and she’s still corps and unlikely to ever be promoted, but she’s got a loft in Soho. And someone who loves her. And maybe a shot at being happy with a normal life.