The Cranes Dance

by Meg Howrey

  There are things you do when you are a teenager, or a dancer, or just a girl, I guess. You cut your food up in special ways, or you cut yourself, or paper dolls. You pretend that there is an invisible audience watching you all the time, and you do things to impress them or pretend that they didn’t see what you just did because their live video feed was interrupted somehow. You steal things or tell lies or speak to strangers in a Russian accent. You have sex with someone you love, or with someone who gets you really drunk. You lie to your parents, your boyfriend, yourself, your therapist. You cheat on your homework or do other people’s homework for money. You get up, you take class, you rehearse, you perform, you go to bed. How do you decide which of these things are truly crazy and which are just being alive?

  You realize, too late, that you are that sneakiest of all beings. You are a giver. You gave your sister drugs. You started her on a path from which there is possibly no return. You should have said no. You should have ruined her life then, instead of letting her ruin it in much worse ways later on.

  But Gwen got better that year. She seemed fine. She seemed happy, or at least not unhappier than anybody else. Who’s happy? Gwen didn’t make a ton of friends in her class, but she was so clearly a star in the making that it would have been impossible anyway. There were no more hysterical scenes. For Gwen’s birthday, Mara and I got her a cat, and she named it Clive. She even made jokes about it catching mice, although we never saw one again. At the end-of-the-year performance, Gwen made my heart stop, she was so beautiful, so serene, so absolutely perfect. When Marius gave her a contract I was waiting outside in the hallway and she flew into my arms and we jumped up and down, hugging each other. She told me that I didn’t have to go to therapy anymore.

  And she became a star for real.

  You buy a humane trap and you end up killing the thing anyway.

  I’ve been ignoring the pain in my neck, which I can’t do anymore. I need to get out of here. But to get up and leave would be to pass the corner where Gwen crouched and banged her head against the wall. I shouldn’t have left her here when I moved in with Andrew. I should have forced her to move someplace else. Oh, the things I should have done.

  If you were recording my story, this tape would be Exhibit A.

  Oh Gwen.

  7.

  Okay so when you’re trying to sort out what’s crazy and what’s not and where you might lie on the spectrum and how much guilt you can absorb, it is possible that ballet is not the most useful arena in which to position yourself for perspective.

  You have to keep your head in the game. Keith, who is unabashed about his clichés, always says that. When you’re in the middle of a match, you can’t start doubting yourself or your ability, or imagining how the commentators are ripping you a new one on ESPN, or getting upset over how the trash talk that went down in the locker room is going to make you look like an ineffectual ass when you blow the match, or how when this whole bloody mess is over you’re going to relive every single point while you lie next to your palely disappointed Icelandic girlfriend, and you’re still going to have to get up the next day and hit balls, and it just never really ends or gets any easier.

  My nerves felt flayed today. Everybody bothered me. Company class. Joan with her pile of pointe shoes and therapy tools, rolling and stretching away and sewing ribbons with that goddamn earnest conscientious look on her face. Yuri and his ridiculous warm-up pants in DayGlo colors. Simone with her sexy leotard and her perfect glossy bob and her air of living a considerably better life than everyone else because she’s married to a gazillionaire and does live a considerably better life than everyone else. All the gay guys being so gay. All the straight guys being so straight. All the South Americans being so South American. Everybody who seemed perfectly fine about taking class and not at all tortured. Like Andrea, who never just throws her hair up in a clip, but always has this perfect cinnamon roll of a bun. The upside-down Us of each and every one of her symmetrically rayed hairpins oppressed me all through barre. And Nicole was teaching because she’s rehearsing this Balanchine ballet we’ll be doing in rep in a few weeks and so we all have to suffer through her ridiculous class, even those of us who aren’t cast in that ballet. Former Balanchine ballerinas make me crazy. None of them have ever recovered from being in the presence of the Master, and they have this weird mystical sexual love of dance that utterly confounds me. I would envy it if it looked less fucked up … like they weren’t all still hoping Mr. B will stop by and pat them on the head, that their entire lives weren’t an offering to a dead man, that they all didn’t still get up every morning, draw on black liquid eyeliner, brush out the dry ends of their waist-length hair like it was 1969 and they’re still wondering why you can’t get Tab anymore.

  While we’re on the subject of unrequited whatever, why do I still want Charles to make a move even though the two times I’ve had sex with him were vaguely disappointing and he went into these elaborate mini-dramas afterward of avoiding me and flirting with other girls just in case I thought for two seconds that he actually liked me. Which was painful every time even though I don’t like him. (Hello, Charles, I still don’t want to be your girlfriend, so fucking relax!) Why does the sight of Hilel make me say to myself, “My mouth is filled with ashes.” I’m over that whole situation. I just read that somewhere, “mouth full of ashes,” and the phrase stuck and now I think of it every time I see him and since I have the thought, I kind of get the feeling as well. My mouth gets dry.

  Why why why. Why must Emma and Tyler act like they have some secret inside information about what Marius thinks of all of us and who’s going to do what next season, and why do I spend whole mornings thinking of situations where I triumph over them in some very witty and cutting way? Why do I spend other mornings imagining being treated horribly by various people just for the pleasure of having a legitimate complaint against them?

  Why am I acting like I’m stuck on the island of Lost? It is possible to quit dancing. I don’t have to be here.

  But aside from having nowhere else to go, I guess I still, on some level, care.

  At one point when Nicole was rhapsodizing about the HEEL, the HEEL, I caught Mara’s eye and she made this funny mad-scientist face, and I thought, Well, okay we accept that we are all a little crazy. It’s an act of defiance in today’s world, to care about ballet. To care about the HEEL, the HEEL.

  And for a moment I saw the room and everyone in it a different way. Gods and goddesses, rebel angels, gorgeous, impossible, improbable us, refusing everything that is ordinary and sane and reasonable. Champions of the extraordinary.

  I watched Yuri in his ridiculous pants execute a breathtakingly beautiful adagio. And I was overwhelmed with pride and humility that I was in the same room with him. That this is the company I keep. That this is what I do. Such moments are fragile, too fragile to cling to. I tried to hold the feeling lightly, with the tips of my fingers.

  After class I had rehearsal for this ballet Look At Me. It’s another one we’ll be doing in our mixed repertoire, for the evening that’s been labeled “New Directions.” Three ballets by contemporary choreographers. When I got to Studio B there was a small camera crew and a reporter setting up in a corner.

  “What the hell?” I said to Simone, who was stretching at the barre.

  “New York Times.” She shrugged. “They’re doing a piece on James.” James King is the choreographer for Look At Me. He’s a big Broadway guy—won a bunch of Tony awards. Done a couple of movies.

  “Okay, but why are they filming?”

  “For the Times,” Simone repeated.

  “Um, the Times is a newspaper.” What was I, speaking Greek?

  “Video blog,” Simone explained patiently. Right. I was speaking an ancient language. Everything now has to be YouTube-able.

  “Were we told about this?” I asked, kind of frantic.

  “Of course not.” Simone rolled her eyes. “Abby is running around somewhere. She said they might want to interview som
e of us.”

  “Shit, shit.” Not enough time to dash over to my dressing room at the theater and get some makeup on my face. I ducked across the hall into the ladies’ locker room, scrabbling in my bag hopefully.

  “Does anybody …?” I dumped my bag in front of the sink. One of the new corps girls, Holly, offered me the candy-pink lip gloss she was applying to her cherub mouth. Luckily, Mara joined me at the mirror and handed me an eyeliner, wordlessly. I commenced smudging.

  “Thanks. God, Nicole today,” I grumbled. “Her class just kills me. And I’m not even warm. How do you get through rehearsals with her?”

  “She’s pretty intense,” Mara said, leaning against the sink. “But I mean, we never do Balanchine here, and it feels amazing. You can see why his dancers were obsessed with him. For giving them steps like that. You feel beautiful. Powerful. I know you think Nicole is ridiculous, but she has a lot of important things to say. You know, the whole passing on the tradition of it.”

  “It’s like the Holocaust,” chirped up Holly, blotting her fructose lips.

  “It’s like the what?” I paused in my smudging.

  “You know …” She faltered. “Like, there aren’t many people left that survived the Holocaust, so, like, it’s really important to get their stories. Before they get lost.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “Yeah. It’s like the Holocaust. That’s a really good analogy, Holly.”

  Holly blushed. Mara followed me out of the locker room.

  “You’re so mean,” she said, taking back her eyeliner and poking me in the ribs with it. “She was just trying to sound smart in front of you.”

  “I know. I’m very mean.” I sighed. “And I’ve got to get to rehearsal now. You know, rehearsal?” I added, in Holly’s voice, “It’s like the Siberian labor camps?”

  Mara rolled her eyes. I surreptitiously fished a Vicodin out of my bag and swallowed it. It was easier to swallow than my jealousy. Jealousy of Mara, for feeling beautiful and powerful while dancing and for being in general a much kinder and more receptive person than I am. Of Nicole, for having interesting things to say about dance. Of Balanchine, for being a genius. Of Holly, even, for being twenty and adorable and sort of stupid.

  Back in Studio B, James was talking to the reporter, a guy with a huge handheld camera was filming them, and Abby—our PR woman—was hovering nearby, anxiously smiling.

  “Getting to work with this company is a dream come true,” James was saying. “But I knew I would be asking many of them to step outside their comfort zone. On every level they have surpassed my expectations. They’re just brilliant.”

  This was kind of him. There was a bit of skepticism about his ballet in early rehearsals. A little undercurrent of snobbery. We’ll do anything we’re asked—but please don’t ask us to do dazzle hands.

  Actually, I’ve liked working with James. He’s funny and respectful and appreciative, which is a nice change. And he gave me a great solo. My character, who is called “The Celebrity,” has this moment alone onstage where I am supposed to be performing for myself in front of a mirror. Preening, adjusting my postures, checking in with the mirror to see what sort of effect I’m making. Posing. It’s funny, and then, at the very end, sort of sad, because I end up dropping all pretense and walking toward the mirror all doubtful and vulnerable and so forth.

  Also, I get to wear heels instead of pointe shoes for Look At Me, and so my feet get a break for a few hours a day. Dancing this ballet isn’t some sort of transcendent the-magic-of-Balanchine-is-entering-my-body experience, but in my current state of mind I’m not sure I’m capable of getting that anyway. And it’s a special thing, having something created for you, even if the something is a ballet that will probably disappear forever after we do it twice. Things like Look At Me are really more attempts to attract a wider audience, give people something fun and “accessible.”

  I wasn’t mentally prepared to be filmed today, though. Not that I’ll watch whatever they shoot. It only takes a few times of watching films of yourself dance before you learn: never watch yourself on video. There’s a reason why we are a performance art. Photographs are fine, if it’s a photographer who knows what they’re doing and which image to select. Then you get a picture of yourself looking perfect. But film is totally deflating. If it’s rehearsal footage it looks flat and uninteresting and the mistakes are glaring. If it’s performance footage, you think, Really? That’s what my face looks like? And the mistakes are humiliatingly permanent.

  Ballet and film have an uneasy relationship in general. And god—while I’m on the subject—can we please stop making movies about ballet? Enough already! Okay, so The Red Shoes: campy greatness. Turning Point: yes, because it’s real dancers dancing and anyway it’s worth it just for the scene where Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft spank each other in evening gowns. White Nights: Baryshnikov in full force, and we should all be grateful that one of the greatest dancers the world has ever seen is also a smokin’-hot Russian with a genius for communicating passion. So okay, those three are great, but now: everybody stop. It’s just embarrassing. And haven’t we all gotten our fill of the clichés? Does the world need another close-up of bleeding toes? Do we really believe that a stuck-up ballerina can learn to love and be free with just the liberating influence of hip-hop?

  Full disclosure: I have participated in this mockery and am actually in one of the recent dance movies. Not as an actress, of course, but they shot some footage of the company performing, and class stuff. We’re not in it a whole lot, because the movie centers around the supposed prima ballerina of this fictional ballet company, and she was played by a movie star. They got some girl from National Ballet of Canada to be the dance double, and hired five million coaches to get the actress into some semblance of basic ballet for the close-ups. For everything else, it was necessary to move the real dancers several leagues away from the actress so the illusion wouldn’t be shattered. Not that there was much illusion, per se. Between the actress’s lobster-claw hands and biscuit-shaped feet, no one could mistake her for the real thing. Except for the millions of people who completely loved the movie, of course.

  I’m in a hallway scene of that film too, just hanging out and chatting with a group of people. It’s so funny, to see the situation reversed. The actress looks all stiff and graceless when she is dancing, and all of us look totally weird and stilted when we’re supposed to be talking. Even the pretty girls don’t look pretty. We look like Edward Gorey drawings. The actress looks insanely gorgeous.

  But whatever. We got paid nicely. And as Marius kept saying, “If it gets even one person interested in coming to see what we really do …” I don’t know. I should think people would be disappointed if they watched that kind of movie and then came to see us dance and none of us slit our wrists onstage or made ourselves vomit or got on the backs of motorcycles while wearing tutus and started fucking each other.

  The camera guy swooped down on me as I was putting on my heels for rehearsal. I hope I had the sense to suck in my stomach while that was going on. And that my dance bag was out of frame and the bottle of Vicodin wasn’t peeking out from under a leg warmer.

  Sometimes when you are a miserable complaining bitch you find yourself unexpectedly having a really good time doing the things that are making you crazy. There was a good vibe in the studio, even with the camera there, or maybe because of it. Or maybe because I was sort of high. Abby grabbed me after rehearsal and asked if I would do a brief interview. Possibly because I was the highest-ranking dancer in the room right then, and because Abby knows that under normal conditions I can speak in coherent sentences. I tried to pull myself together.

  “How has it been?” the reporter asked me. “Working with a Broadway choreographer? Has the different style been challenging?”

  It’s “challenging” for me to find reasons to get out of bed. Which right now is the bed of my sister, who has lost her reason to have reason.

  “It’s been great for us,” I said. “We have a
very diverse season this year. Full-length classical ballets like Coppélia and Swan Lake and the Midsummer Night’s Dream we’ll be premiering in a few weeks. Important repertoire from the twentieth century. And then some very contemporary works. I think Look At Me is something our audiences are really going to enjoy.”

  Abby, who was stationed just beyond the reporter, shook her head at me and made a “Kill it” motion across her throat, like I said something wrong. Which made me afraid that the Vicodin had given me crazy eye. But the reporter was still looking expectantly at me, so I kept going, switching tracks.

  “One of my favorite dancers of all time is Cyd Charisse,” I said. “So I feel like I’m getting to live out my Cyd Charisse fantasy! I love it.”

  I gave a quick glance over at Abby, who was nodding and grinning approvingly. This was quick and random recollection on my part. I’m not much of an old dance musical buff. But James had brought in a Richard Avedon book of photographs for me to look at—celebrities posing, I guess, was the idea—and there had been a gorgeous shot of Cyd Charisse. My favorite was the one of Marilyn Monroe. In a beaded halter dress, looking like she’s retreated inside her own image, and so her beauty is like clothes she took off and threw on a chair. I’m trying to get the expression on her face down for the closing moment of my solo.

  The reporter finished with me and I grabbed my bag. On the way out, Abby hustled over.

  “Thank you, Kate. That was perfect.”

  “Yeah, sure. What was wrong with the first thing, though?”

  “Nothing!” She waved her hands. “It’s just exactly what Marius said. Like, almost word for word.”

  “Ha! Well, you know I’m going to be artistic director of this company someday, so I guess that’s only fitting.”