by Tiler Peck
Just then Katarina heard the tapping of shoes against the paving stones, and she looked up to see a woman walking straight for her, her eyes down on her phone.
“Watch out!” Katarina said, scrambling to her feet.
“Oh!” The woman jumped back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there!”
It was Tiler Peck. Katarina tried to speak, but no words came out of her mouth. Somehow seeing one of the world’s best ballerinas walking around on the street like a normal person was even more amazing than seeing her backstage at the ballet had been.
Tiler cocked her head at Katarina. “Hey, I know you, don’t I?”
Katarina swallowed and forced herself to speak. “I—I’m Katarina.”
“Oh, right!” Tiler said. “You’re one of the budding ballerinas I met after the show a couple of weeks ago. Is your friend here too?”
Katarina shook her head, feeling the tears build behind her eyes again. She wasn’t sure if Sunny even was her friend anymore. “No.”
“Hey, are you okay?” Tiler asked, touching her arm. When Katarina didn’t know how to answer her, Tiler continued. “Tell you what. I was just headed to this café down the street that makes the best hot chocolate. I like to get one after I’ve had a hard day. It always makes me feel better. How about you come with me and we’ll both get one?”
Katarina nodded, and she and Lulu followed Tiler to the nearby café. Tiler was so kind and friendly as they ordered their hot chocolates and sat down at a small table in the corner that Katarina’s nervousness from being around the ballet star began to melt away. When Tiler asked what had her down, the whole story spilled out of Katarina like she was talking to one of her best friends. She told Tiler all about the dance competition that was coming up, her fight with Sunny, and how hard she’d been working at becoming a better dancer.
“Sunny said I’m working so hard that I’ve forgotten ballet is supposed to be fun,” she told Tiler, “and I’m starting to think she might be right. I’m just… well, I guess I’m scared.”
“Of what?” Tiler asked.
Katarina shrugged. “A lot of things, like the money my dad is spending on my lessons. Or that the pigeons are right and no matter how hard I work to make my technique better, I’ll never fit in as a dancer anyway because of my stupid toes.”
Tiler arched an eyebrow. “Pigeons talk to you?”
“Not really. I just imagine they do sometimes.”
“Okay, good, because that would be a real problem,” Tiler said with a grin. “Now, what about these toes? Show me.”
Katarina stood up and showed her how her toes turned in. “See? I’ll never fit in.”
“So what?” Tiler said. “Maybe you’re not supposed to fit in!”
Katarina dropped back into her chair. “What?”
“Lots of great dancers had something a little different about them,” Tiler said. “Sometimes the things that make us different are also what make us special.”
“You think so?” Katarina said. “But what about my turnout? With toes like these, I’ll never have great turnout, and Madame Alla says that’s really important.”
“Well, don’t tell Madame Alla this,” Tiler said, leaning farther over the table so that she could whisper to Katarina, “but turnout isn’t everything. You know who else doesn’t have great turnout?”
“Who?” Katarina whispered back.
“Me!” Tiler said.
“What? No way!”
Tiler nodded. “But if I’m doing my job right and putting all of my love and passion into my dancing so that it makes the person watching me feel something, that’s what’s important to me.”
“You’re right,” Katarina said, awed.
“Plus, a little less turnout has worked in my favor. I’m able to move quickly and do intricate footwork, and some ballerinas who have great turnout and more flexibility might have a harder time moving as quickly,” Tiler continued. “In ballet we want to give the illusion of perfection, and that can feel like a lot to live up to. But no dancer is perfect, just like no person is perfect. So it’s just about using what you have the best way you can. You don’t need to be anything other than who you are.”
* * *
Katarina replayed those words over and over in her mind as she walked to the subway after saying goodbye to Tiler. If she could just focus on becoming the best dancer she could be, instead of trying to become a perfect dancer, it would take a huge weight off her shoulders!
But she wanted a second opinion, so she was relieved when she found Beatz on the train. He was playing a lively tune, beads of sweat forming on his forehead as he jerked his drums and strummed his guitar and blew into his harmonica. Just like Tiler Peck, he made it look easy unless you looked really close to see how hard he was actually working.
“Hi, Beatz!” Katarina said when he finished the song.
“Katarina Ballerina,” he said. “How are you this fine evening?”
“I’m okay,” she replied. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course!”
“Do you think you can be a good artist even if you’re different?” Katarina asked.
“Let me ask you something,” he said, leaning close to her. “Have you ever seen someone play an instrument like this one?”
Katarina looked at the crazy contraption strapped to Beatz’s back. “No, I guess I haven’t.”
“Well, there’s your answer!” Beatz said. “Believe it or not, I actually trained as a cellist.”
Katarina gaped. She couldn’t imagine Beatz in a tuxedo playing classical musical in a symphony. “Really?”
“Yep!” he said. “But it just wasn’t me. It didn’t ignite that fire in me that good art is supposed to. But this does.”
“Do you think that fire is the most important thing?” Katarina asked.
“Absolutely!” Beatz said. “Now, you have to put in the dedication in order to develop the muscles you need to create art. But the fire inside of you, the passion for what you’re creating, is what will make your art captivating.”
“Do you think I could be a captivating dancer someday?” she asked. “If I keep training my muscles?”
“I think you’re already a captivating dancer,” he said. “Because you love to dance and that love radiates out of you. Technique can be learned, but passion can’t, and I’ve seen that passion in you since the first day we met. Here, let me show you.”
Beatz struck up a song, and Katarina knew what she had to do. She stood up and started to dance, but she didn’t worry about the steps or how much her toes were pointed or how turned out her hips were. She just moved the way the music made her feel, the way she used to. The rumble of the train and the people around her seemed to fade away until all she was aware of was the music and the movement of her body.
When the music ended, Katarina heard applause. She opened her eyes—which she hadn’t realized she had closed—and saw all the people who had stopped what they were doing to watch her dance.
“See?” Beatz whispered in her ear. “That’s what the fire in you can do.”
Chapter 11
KATARINA WENT TO Sunny’s house to apologize, but before she could even get the words out, Sunny apologized to her. They hugged and promised they would do a better job of telling the other how they were feeling from then on.
Then Katarina went home and started to add to the collection of ballerina photos on her walls. She taped up pictures of the dancers who inspired her: Tiler Peck, Misty Copeland, Michaela DePrince, a soloist for the Dutch National Ballet… and the most important of all: her mom.
Before Katarina knew it, it was time for the ballet competition. She and Sunny had been working hard (and having fun!), and she thought their pas de deux was ready. Lulu and Lapochka, at least, had seemed to enjoy watching it the last time they’d rehearsed at the studio!
The competition was being held on the New York City Ballet stage in Midtown, and Katarina felt just like one of the dancers as she and Sunny got ready in
their dressing room with some of the other girls from their class. As Katarina was struggling to get her curly hair into the smoothest bun possible, she spotted Celeste in the mirror standing just outside the dressing room, cell phone held to her ear.
“But the competition starts at seven! I told you about it weeks ago,” she was saying quietly into the phone. Katarina wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but she couldn’t help herself. “Uh-huh… I’ll try my best, but there are a lot of dancers competing, so… Yes, ma’am. I know—there’s no point competing if you aren’t going to win.”
Celeste looked like she was on the verge of tears when she hung up, and Katarina felt a surge of sympathy for her. Before she’d headed backstage, her dad had given her a big hug and told her he was proud of her no matter what happened.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked as Celeste came in.
The other girl looked down at the red leotard Katarina was wearing. She and Sunny had decided on this costume as a little tribute to the first day they met.
“What are you wearing?” she asked sharply.
But this time it didn’t make Katarina feel bad, because she thought she was beginning to understand why Celeste could be such a jerk sometimes.
“Come on,” Sunny said, tapping Katarina’s shoulder. “Let’s go get warmed up.”
There was a room set aside backstage for dancers to stretch and do some last-minute practice in front of the mirror before being called out onstage to dance. Katarina and Sunny ran through the normal warm-up they did in Madame Alla’s class and then began practicing some of the trickier bits of their pas de deux. They nailed every step, and Katarina was feeling more confident than she ever had before.
“This is going to be great!” she said. “I’m so glad we decided to do this together.”
“Me too,” Sunny said. “Maybe we could even beat Celeste and go to the ballet camp together.”
“That would be amazing,” Katarina said. She caught a glimpse of the clock on the wall. “Oh, the competition’s about to start. We’d better go find Madame Alla.”
Sunny waved to the other dancers warming up around them. “Merde, everyone!” she said, and most of them said it back.
“What’s ‘merde’?” Katarina asked as they walked away.
“It’s what dancers say before a show,” Sunny told her. “In the theater, they say ‘break a leg,’ but dancers don’t, for obvious reasons. It’s French, just like everything else.”
“What does it mean?” Katarina asked as they approached the short staircase that led back to the dressing rooms.
Sunny laughed. “My mom would be mad at me if I told you! It’s not as bad as what they do in the opera, though. They pretend to spit on you for good luck!”
They were halfway down the stairs when Sunny’s foot suddenly slipped out from under her. She lost her balance and tumbled down the last four steps, collapsing into a heap at the bottom.
“Sunny!” Katarina cried, rushing to her friend’s side. “Are you okay?”
Sunny was clutching her ankle. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!”
Madame Alla had heard the commotion and came running to them. She felt around Sunny’s ankle with her fingers while Sunny gripped Katarina’s hand.
“Is it broken?” Katarina asked.
“No, only sprained,” Madame Alla announced. “You will be fine in a week or two, Sunny, but I’m afraid you will not be able to dance tonight.”
Katarina felt like her stomach had dropped into her feet. “Oh no! Sunny, I’m so sorry!”
“It’s okay, Katarina. Don’t feel bad,” Sunny said as Madame Alla helped her to stand. Katarina wrapped her arm around Sunny’s waist so that her friend could lean on her. Together she and Madame Alla helped Sunny hop back to the dressing room, where she could sit down.
“I can’t believe we’re not going to get to dance in the competition,” Katarina said. They’d worked so hard, but all of Katarina’s dreams of somehow winning a place at that ballet camp had evaporated.
“No, silly, I’m not going to get to dance,” Sunny said. “There’s nothing stopping you! You’ll just have to do our pas de deux by yourself.”
“Oh no, I can’t do that,” Katarina said. “We were supposed to do this together!”
“You’ve worked too hard and come too far not to give it a try,” Sunny said. “Please? If I’m not going to get to go to that ballet camp, then you have to so you can at least tell me all about it.”
“She is right, Katarina,” Madame Alla said. “You deserve to take your chance, and the audience deserves to see you perform.”
“Really?” Katarina asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. The idea of going out on the stage by herself instead of with her friend at her side filled her stomach with butterflies. What if she froze up again, the way she had at the talent show?
“Yes!” they both said.
Katarina took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
* * *
By the time Katarina was on-deck to dance, the butterflies in her stomach had turned into great big bats. Madame Alla stood in the wings with her as she watched Celeste dance onstage. She really was a beautiful dancer; she’d get one of the spots at the ballet camp for sure.
Celeste finished dancing and bowed to thunderous applause. Katarina couldn’t believe how loud it was. How many people were out there in the audience? Madame Alla gave her shoulder a squeeze.
“You can do this, Katarina,” she said. “Merde.”
“And now our final dancers of the evening,” the host onstage said. “From the Ballet Academy East, Katarina Marin and Suhanisa Kapoor!”
Katarina tried to swallow down her fear and then stepped out onto the stage. She took her opening position and heard a murmur go through the crowd in the silence before the music started when no other dancer joined her. Katarina’s hand, which was supposed to be clasped with Sunny’s at the beginning of their pas de deux, felt extra empty.
As the delicate strings of the violin rose, Katarina began to dance. She did the opening chassé sequence. The butterflies were still flapping around in her stomach, but she began to feel like things might be okay. She nailed her double pirouette and landed in fourth, just like they’d practiced, so that Sunny could do her grand jeté and arabesque.
But, of course, Sunny wasn’t there.
Katarina didn’t know what to do. For a couple of beats she just stood there, her mind racing as she tried to figure out how she’d fill in the holes in the pas de deux that Sunny’s absence had left. She tried to do the jeté and arabesque herself, but now she was rattled and she wobbled so much during the arabesque that she had to put the leg she’d lifted into the air back down on the floor so she wouldn’t fall. She was suddenly very aware of the rows and rows of people staring at her. This wasn’t like the real “Dance of the Little Swans,” where the dancers had one another to blend in with, and all of the advice Tiler had given her about celebrating the things that made her different went flying out of her head. The hundreds of eyes in the room were on her. She looked out over the crowd, trying to find the reassuring faces of her dad or her friends, but she didn’t see anyone she recognized. She tried to keep dancing, but the routine didn’t work right with Sunny’s parts missing, and Katarina’s limbs began to feel heavier and heavier as she struggled through the dance.
They’re all staring at me, she thought. They’re looking at my bumpy bun and my turned-in toes!
Katarina stopped dancing. In her panic, she couldn’t remember which step came next. All she wanted to do was run off the stage.
But suddenly, from the back of the theater, she heard the sound of enthusiastic drumming.
Chapter 12
KATARINA SQUINTED PAST the lights, trying to see where the mysterious drumming was coming from. But when she heard the guitar and harmonica join in, she didn’t need to look anymore to know. It was Beatz!
Listening to Beatz’s music—which was so him, and full of the love and passion he always put into his
music—Katarina realized it didn’t matter if her toes didn’t look like the other dancers’ or if she wobbled during her arabesque or even if she won a place in the ballet camp. What mattered was that she loved dancing and this was her chance to share that love with everyone else in this room.
Katarina grinned and took the tie out of her bun, shaking her curls loose. Like Beatz playing the cello, having a perfectly smooth ballerina bun just wasn’t her. Her wild curls were, and she was done trying to fight them. Her curls and her turned-in toes and everything else that made her a little bit different were also what made her special.
Katarina started to dance along with Beatz’s exuberant song, just like she’d done on the subway so many times. She moved her body however the music made her feel. Sometimes that meant ballet steps, but other times it was steps that were entirely her own. Her love for dancing burned like a flame deep in the center of her chest, and as the music transported her, she felt it spreading out, all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes, and she wondered if it had left her entirely and was now spreading to the audience around her.
As she danced, Katarina glanced into the wings, where she spotted Sunny leaning on one crutch, cheering her along. Katarina jetéd across the stage toward her, took her hand, and led her out onto the stage. Katarina danced and Sunny kind of joined in. She couldn’t do any footwork, but she made graceful movements with her free arm and lifted her hurt foot behind her in the most beautiful arabesque Katarina had ever seen.
The other dancers from their class were watching from backstage too, and Katarina beckoned to them. She wanted them out there with her, not because she wanted to blend in with them or to hide from the eyes of the audience, but because she wanted to share the love she was feeling with them. They streamed out of the wings to join her, everyone moving the way Beatz’s music made them feel. Even Celeste eventually came out onto the stage, and Katarina saw a huge smile spread across her face as she began to dance.