This feeling followed me, and even worsened, as I began my professional career. As an apprentice in Boston Ballet II, I was surrounded by excellent dancers with finely honed physiques. My then-boyfriend, Mason, had wildly hyperextended knees and arched feet. His hips flopped open to produce the desired turnout effect. I’d stare at my knees in the mirror and shoot hateful daggers at myself. I kept working, identifying areas where I needed to improve. I’d watch the dancers who were more proficient than me and try to analyze why. But ballet class after ballet class, I’d still gaze upon my ironing-board, inflexible arabesque with tearful rage.
* * *
—
Finally, a vital change happened. A revelation. I began to notice that not all the best dancers in the company had the best “ballet bodies.” These ideal bodies, which students like myself had obsessed over for ages, didn’t guarantee you talent or intelligence. Talent without intelligence is like spaghetti without a plate: a mess. My brain was the key to becoming a better dancer.
I started working differently in class, trying to make up for the things I supposedly lacked. I used what hip turnout I actually had to create the illusion of even greater turnout. I found that even without “perfectly arched feet” I could be as expressive with my little hooves as I could with my hands and fingers. I looked at my knees not as bent, knobbly branches, but as tools to draw attention to where I wanted it drawn. I concentrated on true and proper classical ballet technique, without obsessing over inhuman details. I began using my muscles properly instead of just wrenching my body this way and that. I immediately felt more in control of my body and my dancing became less accidental. This new focus gave me the freedom to dance with more technical precision and artistry.
I look back on the time I spent hating myself bitterly. I eventually learned that denial prevents growth. I needed to just get over it to truly become myself. And when I see that people get stuck on the perfect “ballet body,” nothing can change for them, because they themselves can’t change until they want to. I’m not talking about their bodies, but their minds.
I’ve adapted RuPaul’s famous line to better suit my needs: “If you can’t love your ballet body, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else’s ballet body?”
THE TENANT: A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE
In 2017, it was about time for me to have a midcareer crisis. I could get only so far dancing all the lead roles in ABT’s rep, right?
Principal dancers in large ballet companies such as ABT have an egocentric duty to pursue projects outside the realm of their typical seasons. Such projects are commonly known as vanity projects, as they tend to be vainer than Carly Simon karaoke. Two years earlier I had participated as a dancer in my fellow ABT principal Daniil Simkin’s vanity project, aptly named Intensio. It was a harrowing and seemingly endless process that yielded a somewhat entertaining show with wonderful dancers who happened to be some of my best friends. Daniil is a savvy and curious artist; I’ve learned a lot from him.
These vanity projects are often housed at the Joyce Theater, a small venue nestled in the heart of one of Manhattan’s many gayborhoods: Chelsea. The Joyce provides ballet’s stars a place to writhe around to the spoken word, framed by Windows 95 screen savers; one can also go there to see dance styles ranging from classical ballet to fifteenth-century penis puppetry. To the left of the building, one might shop for dildos the size of a Renaissance fair turkey leg, and to the right, one might stop in for a coffee at a Starbucks populated predominantly by homosexual hobos. There’s a quote on the Joyce’s brick exterior by the eccentric and prolific choreographer Twyla Tharp: “Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” This is ironic, for the sole reason that one must leave one’s home to go to a theater to watch the damn dance. Quotes are tough in that way: they look great on the side of a building, but they rarely make sense.
I know the Joyce sounds atrocious, but it’s actually an important and exciting theater. It seems to be run by the fearless, who are wont to give artists a safe space to get freaky without fear of divine retribution. And after four years of dancing roles like Prince Albrecht, Prince Siegfried, Prince Désiré, et cetera with ABT, I was ready to get freaky.
I had contacts from my time dancing Intensio at the Joyce still in my Rolodex, so I sent them a meek inquiry asking if I could do a show. They agreed to meet with me at Le Pain Quotidien, a restaurant I’ve nicknamed “the Bread Quotient,” as I find Le Pain Quotidien an offensively pretentious name for something so mediocre. Naturally, I was incredibly excited about the meeting and composed a simulacrum of a PowerPoint presentation for a show I’d dreamed up titled Manhattan—a one-act murder-mystery dance show scored with classic jazz tunes sung by the greats. Over a boiled egg and tasteless bread that would have made Denmark proud, the Joyce Theater higher-ups patiently suffered my delusional musings and said they would think about it. Then they asked me if I’d ever met the British choreographer and director Arthur Pita. They thought we’d get along swimmingly.
* * *
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Weeks later, the Joyce Theater arranged for me to meet Arthur. Arthur is a very sunny Portuguese/South African/British man who stands around five foot ten, with jet-black hair, an olive complexion, glasses that rest low on his nose, and a full and dark mustache that rests complacently on his top teeth, which are almost always showing in a decidedly British way. His clothing is a mixture of Muji utilitarian and chav tracksuits, and he almost never wears shoes, opting instead to shuffle about in cotton socks. His confidence allows you to admire him without hesitation, and his congenial sense of humor makes him immediately one of your favorite people. And thankfully, he’s attractive without being somebody that I’m worried I’ll want to sleep with. It’s important not to shit where one eats.
“Have you heard of the novel The Tenant”? Arthur asked me.
I hadn’t.
“Have you seen the film?”
I hadn’t.
“Well, you should read it. I think you’d make an excellent Trelkovsky.”
Arthur fascinated me, and I desperately wanted to know more, so I excitedly read The Tenant in a few short days. Arthur was right: Monsieur Trelkovsky—the story’s protagonist, if one may call him that—was mine.
It’s hard to explain the events in The Tenant, a 1964 novel by Roland Topor, as they’re up for much interpretation. An inoffensive summary is that a Parisian of Polish descent named Trelkovsky is possessed by the spirit of the former tenant of his apartment, Miss Simone Choule, who launched herself out her window in an apparent suicide attempt. Trelkovsky’s obsession with Simone begins with his visiting her in the hospital, where she soon dies, and continues as he discovers more and more about her by living in her apartment. The story ends with Trelkovsky transforming into Simone and launching himself not once, but twice, out the window. The final pages—I apologize, reader, for spoiling the story—consist of Trelkovsky languishing in the very same Parisian hospital where Simone died, squeaking out guttural utterances while bandaged up like a decidedly chic mummy. Horror this, horror that.
It was obvious to me that I should play Trelkovsky, what with my experiences in general weirdness and the art of drag. I called Arthur and the team at the Joyce and gave my approval, and Arthur declared the next stage in the process to be “The Workshop.” This intimidated me, as I’ve never had the luxury of bumbling around in a studio without knowing exactly what was to be created. In the ballet companies I’ve danced for, one generally shows up with the knowledge of what is to be danced, and if it’s a new piece of choreography, there’s rarely the luxury of time to do much fiddling about. But Arthur wasn’t yet sure of the build of the show. Was it a one-man show? Was it a duet? Was there a large ensemble? Was there a marching band?
A small number of people were welcomed into the workshop: myself, Arthur, his assistant Nina, my then-boyfriend Dan, and three other dancers, Calvin, Jesse, and Navarra. The majority of what
we did were acting exercises, which is something I’d never done before. It’s funny how ballet has remained so completely separate from other art forms, even though it contains so many elements of music, acting, and other styles of dance. So much of “ballet acting” is so unbelievable that I find it ridiculous that we haven’t married true acting training to our classical ballet training. The short of it is that we often look like archaic psychopaths, tearing about the stage biting our index fingers and flailing our arms like startled chimps. Why is ballet acting separate from realist acting? How did this happen? And why are so few dancers challenging it? I believe the two can and should unite.
The Tenant has some out-there parts that we tackled quite early on. I’m assuming Arthur wanted to gauge my willingness to “go there.” One of the earlier plot elements had me rubbing clementines over Navarra’s breasts in an imaginary hospital over the prone, comatose body of Jesse. Keep in mind that I had met these dancers the day before. Such is the beautiful thing about being a dancer: one can rub clementines on a stranger’s breasts without feeling the least bit like the neighborhood creep. Or perhaps I’ve just felt like the neighborhood creep all along?
Possibly the most difficult material to tackle was the transformation into Simone. Arthur asked me to bring in a traditional woman’s skirt suit, pantyhose, a wig, drugstore makeup, and a pair of heels, all of which I already owned. He set up a chair very close to the mirror and directed me to take my time changing out of my traditionally masculine clothing and into the traditionally feminine clothing. The Topor text is very rich during this scene and offered an exciting challenge. Trelkovsky’s possession by Simone Choule, literal or figurative, would prove to be the most important test of the entire creative process. The easiest scene for me to grasp theatrically was the scene in which my character becomes very ill. I spent much of this workshop day feigning extreme fevers and shivering violently. I’d twitch and shudder, executing various acrobatics mixed with the morose self-pity of a person unwell.
That evening, with the “in-studio showing” (a short performance of accumulated workshop material) looming on the horizon of the following day, I actually became violently ill. Perhaps I had convinced my body that I truly was ill. Is that even possible? A fever spiked within me, my tonsils swelled to itchy grapefruits, and my bowels evacuated in a most uncivilized fashion. Strep throat, my arch nemesis, had struck again. I still, to this day, have my tonsils and they are as trying as fussy babies. They consistently go out of their way to enjoy infection. I’m sure it has something to do with the maniacally anxious way in which I gnaw at my fingernails.
After a few days, a round of antibiotics, and a loss of six pounds, I performed the in-studio showing. We hadn’t actually come up with much movement, but we had a sketch of what the storytelling would look like. During this period, I had lightened my hair to a sickly yellowish orange, which made my skin appear jaundiced and vaguely unwell. I don’t know what I was thinking, but that’s a sentiment I’ve felt more often than not when reminiscing.
Immediately after the showing, I was subjected to a photo/video shoot for promotional materials. The Joyce wanted to make a selling package for potential sponsors of the show. My face was shaven at the time, and my cheekbones were threatening to puncture my skin and expose my skull as a result of my whirlwind illness. I had lost weight so quickly that my face appeared to be a direct descendant of my neck, creating an earthworm illusion. I wore a plaid wool skirt suit that cinched my already wasp-thin waist into near nothingness and a pair of “fitness pumps,” Lucite platforms with clear plastic straps that were absolutely purchased on an exotic dancer outfitting website. (Naturally, they were my favorite heels.) I donned the wig I had brought, an old ombre blonde whose acrylic tangles hung limply at my temples, its frizzy malaise haloing my general horsiness. As a finishing step, I was asked to apply makeup poorly, and thus your friendly neighborhood drag queen earthworm began applying drugstore makeup to his ghastly visage: royal-blue eyeshadow, burnt-salmon rouge, and fuchsia lipstick. Or maybe it was more like applying makeup to a horse? Whatever it was, it was unnerving. When I look back at the photos, I see the GEICO Neanderthal in drugstore drag.
* * *
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Defying all odds, The Tenant got picked up and was scheduled to premiere in November of 2018. Arthur had decided on a three-person cast: myself as Trelkovsky; ABT principal Cassandra Trenary, with whom I’ve worked on various side projects, as Simone Choule; and Kibrea Carmichael, a young contemporary dancer/model, as Stella, Trelkovsky’s love interest. The casting process was fairly arduous, with two invite-only auditions. I had never been on the casting side of a show. It was strange to watch the dancers literally bend over backward in an effort to secure the gig, and to peruse their headshots, which were almost all comical. Headshots tend to feature awkward peering over the shoulder, teeth whitened to a smooth baleen appearance, hands and fingers prominently featured caressing the face, and heads cocked at “Do you want a treat?” angles.
Cassandra (Cassie) won the part of Simone easily, with her proficiency in contemporary ballet and natural sense of theatrics. The role of Stella posed more of an issue. After two auditions, we weren’t happy with our options. Nina, Arthur’s best friend and ballet master, suggested we look at a young dancer she had seen on Instagram.
Kibrea is a young woman with large Disney eyes and a short, flat-topped, Grace Jones–esque do. She wears only catsuits—black leotards with black leggings and black sneakers or black pumps—showing off arms and legs that sprout from a torso so short it appears to be a small tube, like someone affixed long wooden broomsticks to a single Tootsie Roll. It’s absolutely stunning. She’s very young, delightfully likable, unbelievably jubilant, and enjoys making grand declarations about her life simply to get a response from the old curmudgeons (myself included). Conversations with young people often feel as though everything they say is just to draw out the desired response. Old people disguise their manipulations with much greater mystery. One must approach conversation with Kibrea as though she were a cat, earning her trust and proving oneself worthy of true candidness.
With Kibrea cast as Stella, we began the creation period for The Tenant. Arthur clearly had a system. He bought index cards on which he wrote integral plot points and taped them sequentially to the wall. He’d often pull a chair over to the wall of cards, sit down with his glasses perched on the tip of his nose, cross his legs, and bop his besocked foot to an inaudible beat. We worked daily in NYC for two weeks, stopping only for iced coffee and falafel. As we completed different scenes, Arthur used a neon-pink highlighter to color in a progress bar on each index card. It was exhilarating to see the cards turn pink with the passage of time.
* * *
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Next up was a monthlong residency at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, and this is where the unimaginable, harrowing trials began. Arthur, Nina, Cassie, Kibrea, Frank (the composer), Colleen (the props manager), Will (the stage manager), and I took an Amtrak train upstate. But when we arrived at the arts center, there was no one there to meet us, and our cell phones had no service at all. The whole situation had an air of “You’re all about to be murdered and fed to alligators.”
Finally Arthur stumbled upon the offices and returned to us with Jackie Oranges, a jolly-looking mountain homosexual with squinty eyes and straight black hair. He was friendly and introduced himself to everyone.
“The residence is downstairs,” he told us, leading us down a long stairwell into the depths of the earth. “The offices used to be down here, but it was too depressing, so we moved the residence downstairs instead.”
At the base of the stairs, the first room we encountered was the laundry room, which should have been called the Mold Farm. Linens, sheets, and towels were balled up and discarded in every nook, creating soiled towers of human despair and emitting a scent of teenage jockstrap.
We continued down the dim hallway. The floor of th
e entire complex was made up of large Cheeto-orange linoleum squares, and as the basement used to be the offices, the lighting was fluorescent. The rooms had already been assigned, and the next room we encountered was slated to be occupied by Cassie and Kibrea. Peeking into their room, we saw hundreds of lamps. “We call this room ‘Lamp Room,’ ” Jackie Oranges said, with a homicidal smirk. A large cabinet in the center of the room acted as a partition between the beds, presumably so its occupants could masturbate in secrecy.
Next were the complex’s dormitory-like bathrooms, which housed two standing showers with vinyl shower curtains from 1942. They were so moldy that they seemed to be home to entire microcivilizations. The next room was Frank’s. After that was mine, a square that housed three full beds.
The common area was in shambles. It was as if everyone’s grandmothers had dumped their furniture into one room. It wasn’t incongruous in a chic way; it was pandemonium! Arthur and Cassie were particularly affronted by this room and made it a top priority to feng shui it, reorganizing everything and using the vast stores of the Lamp Room to avoid any use of the office lighting.
The whole residence was besieged by multitudinous flies, but the kitchen got the worst of it. They were everywhere. Every surface was covered in a gooey, sticky residue. It became very clear that we would have to clean the place fastidiously to be comfortable, which was futile, because we were to be underground for a month without any windows. Even the folks on the International Space Station can look out a goddamned window.
We called the residence “the Bunker.” We were scheduled to live and work on a psychological horror play for a month in an underground place with no windows. We were going to go mad.
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