Authors: Meg Howrey
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 some 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.”
“Right on!” said Abby, moving to give me a hug before realizing how sweaty I was. “You’ve got my vote.”
For a second I had that feeling back again. That breakable love in the palm of my hand feeling. I wanted to go sit quietly with it for a moment, but I had
Leaves Are Fading
rehearsal. Turns out there was one section that everyone was counting slightly differently, and so it was this long technical rehearsal over about twenty seconds of dancing. These are the most tiring rehearsals, where you start to feel every little pain, and even though it’s necessary to break everything down, you lose the ballet a little and all you hear inside your head are notes and corrections. Christine was on a trip about how none of us were pointing our feet when we were running, so we had to keep doing that over and over. I think at one point, a few months ago, I was looking forward to dancing this ballet more than anything this season, and now it’s gotten so submerged in everything else that it takes all I have to kick and kick and kick up for air. There was a moment in our first rehearsal when I thought I made a connection between the way Tudor choreographed the arms in this ballet and the way time and memory are bent. I almost had it again today, for a moment. But then rehearsal was over and I was angry at the return of my waves of anxiety and my bad breathing and my pain and I wanted to be luxuriating in this not being a performance night and I needed to
rest
and where, oh where, could I lay my weary head without drowning?