Tags
ballet, creative writing, dance, dancer, dancers, fiction, flash fiction, memory, short story
she was once a famous dancer. in her brief time on the scene, she had only to rise onto pointe in second position, looking away in a show of disdain, and her steely resolve forbade you from looking at anyone or anything else. (such a moment was captured in a photo by edward weston hanging on the studio’s entryway wall.)
i knew her much later when she was white-haired and dragged a useless leg up a long staircase and across a dance floor to reach a throne of sorts from which she taught young children to dance but where she really dissuaded most from even trying.
in many ways she had become a parody: the cynical broken-down wretch who never got the acclaim she believed she so rightly deserved, and it had made her angry and vindictive, even to young children (like me). she had her favorites of course, the ones with beautiful quick feet, lovely elongated limbs, and a certain ineffable allure, but she ridiculed the rest of us who were lacking in such attributes.
it was customary to accept her verbal blows in silence, but one day an older girl, in her teens, new to the studio, snapped. she stomped up in a real fit of rage, and said, you think you’re special don’t you? well, listen, lady, you’re nothing special at all. that was the first time i saw her go quiet. no booming bitter laugh shook the room. no stinging retaliatory remarks spilled one after the other from her. there was silence. complete silence. but the girl’s words had hit their mark for an expression i’d never seen on her before flit across her face: an expression of deep hurt.
it’s been years since i knew her. years since she passed away. years since her name dropped off the lists of dance greats, but i for one still think of her now and then. i remember how she would sometimes demonstrate for us the way a movement should be done (all the while rooted in her seat against the mirror). she would sweep her delicate arms to the side, buoyed with an emotion that seemed to lift her off the chair, or she would raise her arms to form a rounded frame above her head, reminiscent of the likes of pavlova or nijinsky, artistically pleasing and spiritual at once. in those moments, her gruffness would dissolve, as if by magic, to be replaced by the gentleness of the young dancer within.
at such times, i realized the dance had never left her. it had remained inside as breath itself. and even though i was never one of her favorites, this understanding, this revelation, is something i cherish to this day.