Sasha: Book One

by Tonya Plank

I was exiting the elevator, looking at my iPod, trying to decide which piece we’d warm up to, when I heard some high-heeled shoes scurrying down the hallway. The person was coming fast. I saw a shadow. Blonde hair flew around the corner before she did. I braced myself for a collision. When her cherubic face caught up with her beautiful flying tresses, I had to catch my breath. She nearly fell into me, her hair brushing my shoulder, her lips nearly meeting my collarbone. Her perfect little nose nearly colliding with my just-shaved chin.

  She stumbled backward a bit, and wobbled. I instinctively reached out and put my arm around her shoulder to keep her from falling.

  Her skin was so soft and creamy. And her bones were so delicate. She smelled again of fresh, clean air. And she looked even more Tatiana-esque than she had at the Beverly Hilton. Initially, I felt like I’d run into a ghost. But I re-collected my thoughts and regained my senses, and realized, to my elation, that it was my ballerina. She’d come to the studio after all. She gasped. I caught my breath as well, albeit without opening my mouth. I was good that way—not wearing my emotions.

  “Excuse me,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I wanted to say more, but once she looked into my eyes, and realized it was me she was off in a second.

  “Oh…God. I mean, oh sorry!” she stuttered and flew past me, straight into the elevator I’d just exited. I heard her excitedly punching elevator buttons behind me. I turned and held my hand out to her, opening my mouth. But the elevator doors were closing. I took a few steps to the side so that I could see her; she was in the corner. Her gaze caught mine but she quickly looked away, and the elevator doors shut.

  Despite that I was now late to class, I stood there in thought for a couple seconds. She’d come to the studio, and judging by her attire, had taken a group class. But she’d rejected private lessons with me. She wanted to dance, but not with me? I was right about her passion for dance, but she wanted nothing to do with me? I couldn’t stop thinking about her all through class.

  Chapter 3

  I had to put my ballerina out of my mind. Xenia and I were training hard. Blackpool wasn’t far away, and the Worlds then U.S. Nationals were shortly after that. Plus, in the meantime, we’d committed ourselves to performing several show dances in Tokyo. We had lots of dances to choreograph and perfect. And our practices seemed to be more of a struggle lately than ever before. We seemed to be getting worse, not better. It was making me crazy. We couldn’t fall apart. We’d be the talk of the competition circuit. We had a reputation to maintain. People expected an amazing show when we went onstage; they expected technical perfection, to be awed by the originality of our choreography, our artistry, to be emotionally moved by the passionate, romantic story we told. The partnership had seemed to go to hell after we’d broken up romantically. Xenia didn’t trust me anymore to support her, be the frame to her lovely picture. And I didn’t trust her anymore to even try to keep up with me, to follow me into the proper position so we could fully execute our tricks. And it was getting harder to project passion through our dancing, to fill the audience with the passion and desire we felt. That was unacceptable to me. That was what I lived for—to set the audience aflame with our fire. We hadn’t revealed we’d broken up. But people knew. It was obvious we weren’t feeling each other anymore. There’s only so much pretending you can do.

  The next day, I received bad news from Alessandra. Holly was overcome with anger that I’d cancelled one of my private lessons with her to make room for someone else. She withdrew completely from the studio. I couldn’t believe she was so upset over one hour. It drove home how much dancing with me meant to some of these women. I was sad that she’d behaved so. I’d thought she was a nice lady.

  “Wow, I’m sorry,” I said to Alessandra. “I truly didn’t expect that.”

  Amazingly, Alessandra wasn’t too upset. “It’s okay,” she said, all pert. “Your new student, Cheryl, happened to call right after Holly, looking to book more weekly privates with you. I gave her two of Holly’s, and one of Holly’s to Luna, since she’s training so hard for competition and all.”

  Great. My least favorite pro/am student and this new woman with the clinging claws. Luna competed in practically every pro/am. She was usually demanding, insisting I wear a costume to match hers instead of the basic black for the men, that she choreograph our routines, filling them with steps she liked rather than the ones that suited her strengths, and that she compete in a higher division than I felt was right for her level of accomplishment. She didn’t have raw movement ability and she was so thin her body lacked strength and stability. I felt like I had to hold her up, like I was dancing with a paper doll. Unlike Cheryl, she learned the actual steps quickly. I just couldn’t teach her talent, core strength, and ease with movement.

  But the judges always gave her quite high scores. Because she competed so much, and thus spent a great deal of money, the organizers and studios loved her. Her husband was a big Hollywood producer and everyone knew it. I had a hunch he contributed nicely to the comps as well. As much as it bothered me, I didn’t let myself lose too much sleep over the politics involved in the pro/am competitions. I couldn’t control anything anyway.

  Cheryl was my last private of the night. The second I saw her approaching, I felt a pit in my stomach. Instead of street clothes, like she’d worn last night, she wore a tight black practice leotard with nude tights underneath, and nothing more—no skirt. She was dressed in serious practice garb, exactly like Xenia. She also wore new Ray Rose satin Latin sandals, four inches high. Xenia’s shoe style. But the shoe style she wore to perform in. These weren’t practice shoes. Practice shoes were cheaper, made of tougher material, made for getting all bruised up, torn on the inner edges where you would rub your heels together to make a solid third position. Cheryl had become very serious about dance, very serious about becoming Xenia, literally overnight.

  There were mainly two types of women who took lessons with me: those who dressed in their cutest, frilliest, low-cut sundresses and expensive high-heeled sandals and the like, who simply wanted to dance with a top male pro. And those who wanted me to make them into an amateur star. One look at Cheryl’s Xenia-like getup told me she would fall in the second camp, though from her first lesson I’d pegged her as the first. Well, it would be better this way, I thought. At least she wanted to learn, it seemed, not just flirt and paw me.

  “Good evening,” I said, opening the door.

  She giggled in return, flashing me her own unique smile, which I now recognized for what it was. Perhaps she was one of those women who’d had too much facial surgery and could no longer move her muscles well. I’d heard about cosmetic surgery doing that. I’d never actually seen it though.

  She went to grab my hand. I instinctively drew back. A slight frown shadowed her otherwise happy eyes, making me feel badly.

  “Ah, why don’t we pick up where we left off?” I said. “With the basic, in front of the mirror. I want you to get it right. This is the basis of all Latin dance.” If she was serious about learning proper technique, she would want to get the basic down pat.

  She nodded and turned to face the mirror. We started again with the box step, Cheryl mimicking my movement in the mirror. I could tell she hadn’t practiced at all since yesterday. She’d completely forgotten it. So I taught it to her again, calling out the beats, calling out the foot she was to move on each beat. It only took half the lesson this time. Which was an improvement. But even when she had the pattern down, her Latin movement was all wrong. She wasn’t connected to the ground, or moving any part of her body other than her hips, making it look like she was just swinging her butt back and forth. This wasn’t uncommon with beginners. But proper Latin movement was a lot harder to learn than simple foot placement, and she’d had a problem even with that.

  “I want you to close your eyes and connect with the floor,” I said, turning down the music. “With each step, I want you to feel the floor with the balls of your feet. That is where your weight should be centered.
Your foot never completely leaves the floor, but traces it. You take a step, then move your weight to that leg, settling into your hip, and shifting your movement upward to your rib cage, and press shoulders down. Movement in your rib cage is what causes your shoulder to move, sending your arm out into a lovely line. Like this,” I said, demonstrating. “The entire body movement is organic. It’s all connected.”

  She shook her head and fluttered her hands about as if it was all too much instruction at once. She didn’t even try.

  “Okay,” I said. “Here, we do together.” Sometimes, when I got frustrated, my English grammar faltered and I forgot to add certain connecting words or used the wrong tense. I’d always prided myself on learning good grammar and attaining a strong American accent. So it bothered me when I failed. I always hoped people didn’t notice. Initially, it didn’t seem like she did.

  I began, but she didn’t. Instead she sighed and put her hands on her hips.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked. I knew it was a lot to learn at once, especially for a novice. “Should I break it down more?”

  “No,” she nearly shouted. “I thought ballroom dancing was about partners.”

  “Of course it is,” I said. “But it is also about technique. I had thought that you…” I stopped before finishing my thought. I didn’t want to give her any ideas about competing. “We will do the partner dancing now, if you prefer.” I would have to deal with her claws at some point. It might as well be now.

  I started walking toward her, when a loud guffaw burst forth from her mouth. It was so throaty, at first I thought she had burped. Strange for such delicate lady, I thought. But then she laughed again, and it was clearly a laugh. A witch’s cackle was more like it.

  “Yes, I prefer,” she said, mocking the last word. “Your English is so stilted. So formal. It’s just funny.”

  Her remark took me aback. I’d expected her to notice my grammatical error, not ridicule my formalities. I’d learned English primarily in London, where I’d trained with Micaela, before moving to the United States with Xenia. Their manner of speaking is more formal there. But I was working hard on becoming American, on trying to use Americanisms whenever I could, and on trying to enunciate the language properly. It’s a very hard language for a Russian to learn. There are so many differences, in both grammar and pronunciation, and of course the same words exactly translated don’t always mean the same thing. I hated making mistakes. I hated people knowing I was from somewhere else. I really wanted to belong here. Some of the women I danced with thought it was cute, and corrected me so as to make me better. It still made me feel like crap. But it was far worse when I felt someone was making fun of me, like this woman was. I could feel my face getting hot.

  “I am sorry. I am still learning—”

  “I’m. I’m sorry,” she said, accenting the “I’m.”

  I was confused. “Oh, no, it is okay—”

  “No!” At this she completely burst out laughing. “I’m saying, I am saying, you use the contraction. ‘I’m’ not ‘I am.’ ‘I am’ sounds stilted.” She continued laughing for a good several seconds, not realizing apparently that I wasn’t laughing with her. Or not caring about her distinctions.

  “Okay, I’m…” I said. Now I couldn’t even remember what I was saying. I tossed my head about, trying to shake off her criticisms and get my train of thought back. “Okay, we now learn the proper…the correct handhold.” Two mistakes. She was getting me worked up. This time she noticed, and nearly collapsed in another paroxysm of laughter. Well, at least I could entertain her with my speech. Whether I could teach her to dance was another matter.

  I showed her how to hold my hand so as not to grip my palm, how to elegantly place her other hand over my shoulder without leaving claw marks on my back. But now that I was aware of myself, I kept making mistakes with the language, and she kept laughing and telling me I was “Cute,” which she said with a high-pitched coo. The lesson was a ridiculous failure. She wouldn’t listen to the instructions I was giving her; she was too focused on their delivery.

  I was never happier to see Xenia, as she paced back and forth outside the glass door waiting for me. “I want you to practice what I showed you for next lesson.”

  “Yes, sir!” Cheryl said with a salute. “I will prrrrrrractice!”

  Another problem I had. I rolled my r’s too much. It was a Russian thing. And I’d had other American women tell me I sounded like the Gestapo, the way I gave orders. They usually said it with a sweet giggle though, not a cackle.

  I gave her a thin-lipped smile. “Have a good week, Cheryl.”

  Before she could say anything, I opened the door for her and turned toward Xenia. Cheryl continued looking at me, not getting that my time was needed by someone else now. Finally she followed my eyes. When they met Xenia’s, Cheryl gave her an up-and-down, harrumphed, stuck her chin high up in the air and brushed past Xenia, narrowly avoiding shouldering her on her way. Xenia gave her a bemused frown, then looked at me and shrugged.

  “Okay?” she said, walking past me.

  “Don’t ask,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t.” She rolled her eyes.

  I walked to the iPod, set the music for our rumba showcase, then returned to her, held my arms out and invited her into dance position. When the music began, I pushed her out into a spiral sequence, then into her lunge, our opening move. When I went to pull her up out of the lunge, her fingers lost their grip and she stumbled, something she’d never done before.

  “What did you do, stick your fingers in grease before you came to practice?” I asked in Russian. We usually spoke in Russian when we practiced without our coach, Greta, who was German and needed us to speak English.

  “You dropped me. Don’t shift the blame.”

  “I, I didn’t drop you. Your fingers were like butter.”

  “I couldn’t get a proper grip. It was like you were hesitant to…” She shook her head and turned away. I realized then it could have been my fault. It could have been that I was still recovering from Cheryl’s clutching claws.

  “Okay, okay, maybe—” I began.

  “Just like you. You can never take responsibility for anything,” she said, her back still to me. Which now made me not want to take any of the blame.

  And we were off on our usual jousting match. Nothing could be a mistake in and of itself; it had to reveal something bigger, more overwhelming. Now she was putting me on the defensive for a whole lot more than one stupid stumble. I could apologize for that. I was not about to apologize or let myself be put on the defensive for everything I’d ever done.

  “Come on. Let’s just pick up where we left off,” I said, taking a deep breath.

  She shook her head.

  “Xenia, come on, we have to practice.”

  Finally, with a lengthy exhale, she whipped around and returned to me.

  We got about ten percent through the routine when there was another mishap, again involving a slipped connection. This time she turned away from me too fast and I had to reach toward her to stop her before she spun out of control. I felt a pinch at the top of my spine from reaching too far, twisting my frame out of alignment, and then pulling too hard.

  “Agh,” I said, dropping her hand. I rubbed my hand over the pained nerve in my back. I didn’t do any serious damage. But sometimes I felt like if we kept going like this I might.

  “You are the one with butter fingers,” she yelled.

  I didn’t want to fight. I just wanted to dance. “Come on, let’s continue,” I said, holding my hand toward her, my face expressionless, trying not to take her bait.

  She sighed heavily, then hesitantly returned to me.

  We resumed. And it happened again. Rumba was the dance of passion. And the passion could involve a bit of angst—sexual angst, some tension, with some dramatic push and pull. But we were all angst, all tension, no love, no desire, no romance. This time she was supposed to pull away from me, but I was supposed to hold her, brin
g her back. But she pulled way too hard, as if she wanted to break free of my hold, make me lose my leverage, and I let her go, not wanting to throw my back out again. She stumbled again, and walked away, putting her hands on her hips, then pivoting back toward me, shooting me daggers.

  “You want to see me fall,” she snapped.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Xenia.”

  “You keep doing that on purpose.”

  I thought she was pretty clearly pulling hard on purpose to put undue tension on my back. But what good would it do to accuse each other all night? We had a performance to rehearse. We had an audience we couldn’t let down.

  “Let’s just try to be a little easier on each other,” I pleaded.

  At this she laughed, threw her arms up, and shook her head about. Xenia, always the drama queen. “Now, you say this. After all the yelling. This coming from you!”

  It was true I was a hard-ass. A perfectionist. Demanding. Every partner I’d ever had had told me that. Greta, my coach for years, told me the same. I had to calm down. Let my partner be herself, give her the space to explore her artistry, without insisting she work to counter my strength, to keep up with my speed. I needed to adjust to her, lighten up, treat her with more delicacy, be more respectful of our differences in strength, in speed. I knew this in theory. But putting it into practice had been another thing entirely. Whenever something went wrong, I just came unglued. There couldn’t be problems. I’d worked too hard, come too far, to accept second place.

  I needed to prove it to my mother, my father, that I could do this, that I could be the best in the world. I heard my father laughing at me, telling me I was a no-good piece of shit, feeling the thwack of his backhand against my cheek. He was a lifelong factory worker. He expected me to be the same. Maybe he was jealous that I excelled at something. He didn’t want better for his son than himself. After moving to the States, I realize how un-American this sentiment is. Maybe it’s a Russian fear, that if your kids do better than you, it shows you were capable of more and just didn’t live up to your potential. His laughter echoed in my brain; I felt the blood on my lip every time Xenia and I had any issues. I took it as a sign we’d never be number one. I’d never achieve my life’s goal. I’d never truly separate myself from my father. I had to win, to prove him wrong.