by Meg Howrey
If ballet didn’t exist, they would have to invent it just to give a name to what Gwen can do. So yes, there’s something a little frightening about that. Ballet is such an unnatural act, so a body that looks made to do it must therefore be an unnatural body. Not really … human. Which again is perfect for ballet, because it’s not like there are ballets about Sheila, a registered nurse from Hoboken, or Janet, realtor and mother of two. No, it’s all somnambulistic princesses and tortured birds and dead virgins who have been Betrayed. Even in ballets without plots, you’re embodying music or an ideal or some notion like Regret or Hope.
Take a thing like the second act pas de deux for Titania and Oberon. After all their jealous feuding in Act I they are reconciled, and they demonstrate this by dancing perfectly with each other. So, Harmony. That’s basically it. Be beautiful together.
When you represent Man and Woman Together, as opposed to actually being them, you can approach the sublime. The classical pas de deux is a nice example of this.
In classical pas de deux, the man controls everything. He picks up the girl. He puts her down. He turns her, takes her weight, stops her, and she must always go where he leads. The woman submits to all of this completely. But her submission is not feeble. In fact, the only reason she can submit so utterly is because she is very strong in herself. In her center. She does not collapse, or cave, or stutter-step, or flop. No, she holds herself very consciously, very confidently. She is centered within her own weight. So the man always knows where she is. He can feel her. He can absorb her strength.
This is good partnering. It’s really the only way partnering can work.
Of course it doesn’t always happen.
Sometimes the man isn’t strong, or he doesn’t care about partnering, he just wants to solo. Then the girl collects bruises and jammed ankles and feels abandoned. The woman goes back to the dressing room and says to the other women, “I have to do everything!” and “I can’t trust him!”
Sometimes the girl tries to control everything herself. Or doesn’t hold her own weight. The man tires because he’s having to fight with her on every step. Or muscle the girl around because he can’t get a good grip. The man goes back to the dressing room and says to the other men, “I don’t know what she wants from me!” or “Fuck, it’s like hauling bricks!”
But in the ideal situation it’s perfectly balanced. The woman is strong enough to give everything; the man is sensitive enough to take it all. And because they are listening to the same music, they are always in rhythm. Not just on the same page, but the same note. There is no past to regret or future to fear, everything is present tense. There is no talking, no “What did you mean by that?” Nothing mundane or trivial. What everybody needs is absolutely clear.
There is no actual sex, only the infinite promise of it.
You think actual sex achieves this sort of sublimity? Do you really? And have you ever had that sex? With another person, I mean. Because I’ve had perfect sex in my head, but with another person it’s only ever been great.
We worked for two hours today. Marius’s choreography is good. It’s more than good. And from the first touch, David and I danced well together. Our musicality is the same. I felt something stir in me. That feeling dancing well can give you. I was almost scared to take in that drug. It’s so easy to get hooked.
“Très bien,” Claudette said at the end of rehearsal. “Très, très bien. But, yes. Lovely.”
“I like the way you look at me,” David said. “You really look at me.”
After rehearsal, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to go to the movies, or do laundry, or steam vegetables. I didn’t want anything to intrude upon this clear space where I felt sort of safe from myself.
Cast B was on tonight, so I decided to do a thing that I rarely do anymore. I decided to go to the ballet.
Carlotta got me a seat in the first balcony, toward the back. Luckily I sort of dressed up today. People still dress up for the ballet, and this is kind of them. A party of four took their seats in front of me. Two older couples. The women’s figures were pear shaped past the point where evening dresses look elegant, and they were sensibly clad in tunic-style silk blouses and pants. Their hands and wrists were laden with enormous chunky jewelry, which rattled against the gold chains on their handbags. Their men, one with hair, one without, wore identical sports coats.
“Howard, you go in first. I know Heime will want the aisle.”
“Alice, are you sure you don’t want to check your jacket? You won’t be warm?”
“Loretta, I have your program here.”
“Alice, where are my glasses?”
Alice had an Aladdin’s cave of a handbag and handed out mints and tissues and Howard’s glasses. I was filled with tremendous love for all four of them, for their willingness to come and watch. The number of people who will accept being an audience to anything is getting smaller and smaller. Mostly people seem to want to be the person looked at, even if they don’t know what they are doing, even if what they are doing is horribly embarrassing.
Is there a better sound than when the house lights are brought down and a lowering murmur takes hold of the audience? Alice, wedged in by her coat and handbag, wiggled forward when the overture began. God! Strings! Oboes! Timpani! Are you fucking kidding me? Why, when we know what human beings are capable of doing, do we not turn our collective heads in shame at the sight of rich housewives screaming at each other on television?
The curtain rose, but I was still looking at the orchestra, swaying gently over their instruments. From them I moved to the first rows of the audience, row after row of dark heads. I could see people in my section pretty distinctly, so I watched them watch us. People’s faces become so smooth in the dark, so innocent. So trusting. They know what they are seeing but they must know a little too of what they are not seeing. They know the jewels are fakes. They know the moon is painted. They know it is not easy to turn and jump and they know that a great deal of effort and perhaps pain is being hidden. They do not linger on this. They let themselves be told, be led. They are grateful for being told, being led, being tricked. Our tricks will never hurt them. We will never say the wrong thing, because we never speak. They are never as happy as when we make them cry.
They got babysitters and picked out shoes and turned off cell phones. The woman sitting next to me pressed a hand to her rib cage when the rows of the corps de ballet began their hops in arabesque. A man two rows in front of me craned his head around the man in front of him: not wanting to miss a step.
I was so absorbed that when the first intermission came I hadn’t given more than a cursory glance at the stage. Alice turned to Loretta and patted her hand.
“Glorious,” said Loretta.
“Happy birthday,” said Alice.
“Wonderful,” said Heime, thumping his program against his knee. “Just marvelous.”
I decided that I didn’t want to hear anybody say anything more than that. I wondered if it was possible to get home, brush my teeth, ice my neck, and fall asleep without anything else entering my head. Threading my way through the lobby, I ran into Marius. We stood for a moment together by the bar, and I felt my euphoria cocoon splinter as people passed us, talking about ordinary things, checking their phones.
“What do you think?” Marius asked.
“It’s scary to see them all like this,” I said to Marius. “In the light, I mean. They look more interesting in the dark.”
Marius smiled his inscrutable smile.
“I meant about the ballet you’re watching.”
“Oh that,” I said. My second Vicodin was wearing off and I was beginning to crash. “I’ve been thinking that you should restage the whole thing actually. Less artifice, more humanity. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe it’s better to be remote.”
“Remote?”
“Well, we’re nothing if we’re not inaccessible,” I said. “People can’t judg
e us when they barely understand what they’re seeing. I was just sitting behind people … they aren’t here because they want to relate to us, to what we’re doing, what we’re telling. They’re here because they want to be awed.”
“I was thinking,” Marius said, “the opposite. That it’s wrong for us to be so inaccessible. What does this story have to do with anything anyone has experienced? There’s something … something at the heart of it …”
“Yes,” I said. “But everything is up for interpretation. David said he felt like I was really seeing him when I looked at him in rehearsal. But I think what he meant was that the way I was looking at him was the way he wanted to be seen. Is that him? I don’t know. What does he see when he looks at me?”
“No one will ever judge you the way you do yourself,” said Marius. “Nor will they love you properly either.”
“Are you talking about an audience or a lover?” I asked. Marius is the sort of man you can say the word “lover” to without sounding pretentious. But he gave me this very penetrating look and “lover” seemed to hang awkwardly in the air, inflating, like a vulgarly shaped balloon.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know we’re talking about different things, but I am hearing what you’re saying. If you followed the trajectory of what I’m talking about it would eventually get to what you’re talking about.”
“Sometimes I think you are the only person in the room who understands what I’m saying,” Marius said. “It’s why I keep you around, you know. As hard as it’s been to watch you diminish yourself.”
He put a little space before the word “diminish,” and then served it. An unreturnable shot, directly into the body.
A couple of our donors approached, claiming his attention. I watched Marius smile and shake hands, kiss cheeks: so smooth and confident, knowing just what to say, and how to say it. I said a few words to the donors too, because I’m not bad at these things. I can make the gestures for charming and gracious. I can walk away from Marius and what he said to me and I can come here to the crime scene and take off Gwen’s makeup and Gwen’s scarf and crawl into Gwen’s bed while back at the Lake another swan kills herself and the audience rises to their feet, applauding.
When you are asleep you can’t tell whether or not you are alone, or diminished, or whatever. I have nothing, I thought. But that’s not true. I have her absence. You can see it clearly. Look for the edges of my existence that surround it.
13.
I read on the schedule this morning that Klaus and I had a two-hour private rehearsal today to work on Helena/Demetrius for Dream. I was a little indignant until I realized that this was something I had requested. I meditated on the problem of what to do with Klaus all through class. I was tired, my neck was hurting, I was feeling cruel and angry. I was in a dangerous mood, and I was wearing a lot of lipstick just in case I needed to leave an imprint on anything. Try diminishing Chanel Shanghai Red, motherfuckers!
In the end, I decided to take Klaus through some of the “acting” bits. Nothing shakes up a dancer more than having to emote.
The lovers in Dream have a rough time. Hermia and Lysander are in love, but Hermia’s father wants her to marry Demetrius. Helena is in love with Demetrius, but he utterly rejects her and wants to be with Hermia. All four go tearing into the forest, Hermia and Lysander to elope, Demetrius to follow Hermia, Helena to follow Demetrius. Oberon takes pity on poor Helena, and arranges with Puck to pour a little love juice in Demetrius’s eyes when he is asleep. This will cause him to fall in love with the first person he sees when he awakes, which Puck will arrange to be Helena. Of course Puck gets confused, puts the love juice in Lysander’s eyes, and leads Helena to him. So then Lysander falls in love with Helena and Hermia is distraught, and more than a little pissed off at Helena. Puck tries to fix things by squeezing love juice into Demetrius’s eyes, and getting Helena over to him, but then both guys are in love with her and want to kill each other. And Helena is dismayed because she thinks they are just punking her. And Hermia is very much WTF. Oh, it all gets sorted out, with Puck removing Lysander’s spell, and it ends with everyone getting married, which is how you know it’s a comedy. The tragedies are what happen after everybody gets married.
Klaus was waiting for me in the studio, doing push-ups.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” I put my bag down and considered Klaus’s arms, which are, frankly, very appealing.
“Klaus, I’m thinking we should play around with the first sections,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, popping up. “You’re the boss.”
So we started working. He’s a strong little critter, this Klaus, and he’s got the technique for sure. And the ambition. I see what Marius was alluding to. But Jesus, he was boring. He trotted out all the standard-issue male ballet stuff: the proud chin lift, the doleful chin lowering, the arrogant arm sweep, the dejected arm droop. It pissed me off. I’m dragging myself to rehearsal through injury, fatigue, and a mounting anxiety level that’s damn near choking me, and this kid thinks he’s too cool to get into character?
“I think we need to ramp up the acting,” I said to Klaus. “It might work better if we start really getting into it.”
“For me that always happens in performance,” said Klaus.
The old “It will be there on the night” gambit. I’ve heard it before.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, as airily as I could manage. “That’s sort of like planning out how witty and sexy you are going to be on the date while you are still in the shower. I’m fabulous in the shower, then suddenly I’m at the restaurant and all I can think of to say are things like ‘Ranch dressing tastes good.’ ”
Klaus hesitated, clearly not sure whether I was funny or a complete dork. He probably doesn’t go on dates. Most likely he just shags whatever ballerina is nearest to hand. There’s probably a sign-up sheet in the corps girls’ dressing room.
“I’m kidding,” I said. “I’m always witty and sexy.”
“Just tell me what you want,” said Klaus. “I don’t know what you want.”
Ah, we had come to this. Since the dawn of time has man said thus to woman.
I thought of our massage therapist Irina, and her special Soviet tactics for man handling. Klaus is not Russian, but he’s young and stubborn, so … close enough. It was worth a try, anyway.
“What I love,” I said, “is what you are doing in that first moment. When I come on and throw myself at you, you’re doing this thing where it’s like you see how crazy I am and then you turn to the audience, like Oh Jesus, not her again. It’s great. That’s why I wanted this time to rehearse. So you could keep finding moments like that for yourself, without everybody telling you how it should be.”
This was utter fabrication: Klaus was indeed turning his head to the imagined audience when I ran in, but only because he had been told that is what he does on that count.
“Cool,” said Klaus.
“Let’s do that again and work through the next bit,” I said.
And by golly, it worked. He actually did it. I told him that it was nice to be working with someone who has such great musicality, and he stopped rushing the tempo. “I love the way you are walking like a football player,” I said, and shazam, Klaus lost the tight-assed noble gait. Cunning and deft, I played both sides of the court. I hit my shot, then leapt over the net and hit Klaus’s for him, then scampered back over the net to thank him for having sent me such a perfect return. Then we played the point again and, like magic, there it was, just what I wanted. How come I never thought to use this system before? I caught myself employing a slight Russian accent. We moved on to the moments when he suddenly falls in love with me.
“It’s good the way we are starting to exaggerate our height difference,” I said, when Klaus was still pretending to be tall. “We need some shtick.” After I was done explaining to him what shtick is, I came up with a really cute thing for when he tries to embrace me. I made him bend his front leg so he was basic
ally sticking his nose into my breasts.
“Can I change stuff like this?” Klaus asked anxiously.
“It’s okay,” I assured him. “Marius wasn’t totally happy with what he had choreographed, I could tell. If he doesn’t like it he’ll change it, but he’s going to like it. It works.”
After two hours, Stefan and Rochelle, who are the first cast for Lysander and Hermia, joined us. Rochelle is tiny and adorable, perfect casting for Hermia, and Marius had fun with our little fight scene. We just marked through it today, on account of my neck, and then Klaus, Stefan, and I worked on the part where they both declare their love for me and end up fighting each other. Stefan is the tallest boy in our company, so their fight looked legitimately hilarious, not just ballet funny. I was exalted with my successful foray into manipulation, and kept on making suggestions in Klaus’s name. At one point, instead of doing the classic male dancer fight move (an incredibly lame pushing of another guy’s shoulder and then a spreading of one’s arms as if to say “Do you want a piece of this tunic, my friend?”), I told Klaus to do cartoon fisticuffs while Stefan held him off with one hand on Klaus’s head.
“I can’t even look at you,” said Stefan to Klaus. “You’re going to crack me up. Great idea, man.”
I had Klaus propose that he do a professional wrestling–style drop on Stefan. This seemed to me very Shakespearean.
“No way,” laughed Rochelle. “Marius will never let you guys do that.”
“It’s too over the top,” said Stefan.
“That’s why it will work,” I say. “They are so insane that they can no longer do ballet. They are reduced to brute animals. And the audience gets to see that you’re not just ballet dancers, you’re dudes. Marius will love it. He’s very into accessibility these days.”