Chapter 1 #6
The girl crossed her arms and propped her weight on one hip.
“Well, of course it’s complicated. Ballet’s complicated.
The culture’s totally broken, and no one seems to want to fix it.
Half the girls in my class had eating disorders, including me, and then my school got shut down because my teacher sexually abused one of the students.
And then he moved to another state and started teaching again because apparently that’s totally legal.
Complicated? Ballet’s a fucking nightmare.
But I love it, okay, and I’m trying to keep this dance company from dying a sad, whimpering death, and I reckon you’re really, really good, so will you please, please, just come tomorrow? ”
She stopped and took a deep breath, and Ivy stared at her, realizing that at some point during this rant, she’d taken a step backwards, putting some space between herself and the unsettling information coming out of the other girl’s mouth.
The stranger screwed up her face, perhaps realizing she’d revealed a bit too much to someone she’d just met.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” Ivy asked cautiously.
“I’m Em. Em Watkins. And you are?”
“Ivy Page,” she replied, faintly. “And I’m not a dancer anymore.”
“I know, I heard you. But will you come to rehearsal anyway? Please? You can be anything you want, just please say you’ll be there.”
Ivy paused, wondering what Opa would tell her to do.
She pictured his twinkling eyes, which hid his steel and stubbornness.
There was no one on the planet as pushy as her grandfather when he thought he knew what was best for you.
But he’d been right to push her back towards dancing last time, hadn’t he?
After a moment, she nodded decisively. “You’ll be there. ”
“I—what?” Em frowned.
“You said, ‘Say you’ll be there.’”
Em stared for a second, then cackled. “Oh my God, you’re not a dancer, you’re a dork!”
“Ex dancer, current dork.” Ivy shrugged, with a grin.
Her heart gave an excited little squeeze.
She didn’t know who this girl was or where she’d come from, but she wanted to trust her.
So she showed up at the campus dance studios the next day at 4:30pm.
And she showed up three times a week, every week after for the rest of uni.
Because of Em’s insistence, she started to love dancing again.
Because of Em’s firm opinions about ballet, she started to think a little more critically about the world she’d spent her childhood in.
And because of Em’s fierce loyalty, she now had a best friend who she could trust to push her a little, and tell her the truth even when it was uncomfortable.
Ivy lay on the couch, body still but brain whirring.
Before she could think better of it, she picked up her phone, swiped it open, and pulled up Peter’s email.
It was a job. A chance to leave journalism before it kicked her out.
She should have done that with ballet, should have walked away before ballet broke her heart and left her to rebuild from nothing.
Here was a lifeline—unexpected, and definitely not a dream job, but something more stable than the news industry, which had been lurching from slow-motion decline to high-speed collapse for the last two decades.
She’d still get to write. She’d still get to be around the arts—and not just any art, ballet.
She’d still get to live in this apartment she loved, and she wouldn’t have to feel like a failure again.
Ivy shuddered as she imagined once again sliding into the dark, yawning hole that had nearly swallowed her when she was seventeen, devastated and despairing.
She would not go there again.
She glanced over at the bookshelf, at the last photo she’d taken with her opa.
He was wearing his trademark three-piece suit, and she wore a little black dress with her billowing graduation gown over the top.
He’d been frail by then, in his early nineties, and they all knew he didn’t have much time.
But he’d insisted on joining her parents at Ivy’s uni graduation ceremony, to watch his only granddaughter do what he’d never managed to do.
He’d been so proud of her ambition to be a journalist. A noble tradition, he’d called it, in his thick Austrian accent.
Leaving journalism had always looked like selling out to her.
Journalism held power to account, and it was vital to a functioning democracy.
But now, she kind of got it. What if she found another journalism gig, only to be right back here in a year or two, just as hungover but having lost two years she could have spent developing some new career?
What if she stayed and failed again, just like she’d failed at ballet?
The darkness threatened again, but Ivy wasn’t a girl anymore.
She was an adult with responsibilities, with people she couldn’t bear to disappoint.
Including herself. And if that meant facing reality and trading in a dream for a little stability, well, that was life.
She’d done her best, but she knew better than to keep throwing her heart and soul at a long-shot when the world was telling her no.
She stared at Peter’s email for another long moment.
Em would be furious with her in the morning, but Ivy wanted to do this before she lost her nerve.
Hastily, she tapped out a response, hoping that the short paragraph didn’t reveal either her desperation or her ambivalence.
She would find a new dream. It wasn’t like she was going to work at a brick factory; she would be well-paid to sit behind a desk in an air-conditioned office.
If it was grimy work, the grime was only figurative.
Ivy closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, steeling herself. She would find a new dream, but in the meantime, she needed this job. She let out a slow, steadying exhale, opened her eyes and, before she could change her mind, hit send.
There should be more babies in ballet classes, Justin thought, as the accompanist played a piano cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody” for one of Peter’s fondu combinations.
It was typically complex, and hell on the quads.
Almost no one was paying attention to the music or the steps, though, because there was a baby in this ballet class.
Strapped to the chest of former principal dancer Marcus Campbell, tiny and adorable baby Caroline was the center of attention in studio B this morning.
Marcus sat at the front of the room next to the company’s chief physiotherapist Sharon Murphy, their attention fixed on one dancer: principal Heather Hays, who was back in company class for the first time since taking parental leave.
For her part, Heather looked exhausted but happy to be back after six months away.
Justin was glad she was back, too, in part because he’d missed performing with her, but mostly because her timing was excellent.
With all eyes on Caroline, no one was talking about the video.
Even Peter seemed to have decided that the return of the company’s most beloved dancer, and the presence of her tiny daughter, trumped whatever trouble Justin was in.
But he could only hide behind a baby for so long.
On Friday morning, the Morning Sun had run an article about the video, completely dashing Justin’s hopes that it would all just blow over.
At the thought of the story he gripped the barre a little tighter, then winced—his hand was still feeling the effects of that punch.
That punch, which had found its way onto the internet and somehow crossed the path of Ivy Page, senior arts reporter and senior pain in the ass.
She came around the ballet company at least once a season, sometimes more, and he always tried to steer clear of her.
He’d thought she was attractive and charming the first time he’d met her, with her friendly green eyes and full, expressive mouth, but it was all a front.
Poison Ivy, as he now thought of her, wielded her pen without pity.
She’d reviewed his first performance after he was promoted to principal, five years ago, and turned the review into a meditation on ballet’s supposed tendency to prize a dancer’s arches over his artistry.
Good feet, a nice head of hair, and adequate partnering do not a principal dancer make, she’d opined in print, to the newspaper’s eight million readers.
Winters, while sparkly, wholly lacked substance.
Justin looked down at those feet now, trying to banish Ivy’s long-ago words.
As usual, it didn’t work. Freakish, she’d called them.
The word stung even more than usual today.
These feet that had caught the eye of Missy’s ballet teacher twenty years ago, when he’d snuck into the ballet studio behind her and jumped around at the back of the room.
Miss Mary had made him sit down at the front of the room and watch that day, but she’d pulled his aunt Justine aside at the end of class and offered her discounted ballet lessons for Missy if Justin tagged along.
He was naturally gifted, Miss Mary had said, and wasn’t it worth discovering if he could do something with that gift?
These feet had carried him out of Hillstone, out of the bush and into a career most people only dreamed about.
They weren’t freakish, they were a fucking miracle.
Justin worked his toes against the floor, finding comfort in the familiar combination of movements Peter had set them.
Front, side, back, side, a deep and delicious bend in his calves and Achilles, then ronds de jambe, and then the whole thing reversed itself.
He tried to enjoy this time, when he could dance unobserved, because once Heather and Caroline left at the end of barre, Peter would remember that Justin was there, and that thanks to Ivy’s latest article, Justin was on his shit list.
And that was exactly what happened. Justin and everyone around him were panting and sweating from a particularly grueling grand battement combination, and the accompanist launched into a soothing, languorous rendition of “Stairway to Heaven”—wow, she was really on a classic rock kick today—when Peter interrupted her, and the dancers fell quiet.
Justin’s stomach dropped, and Ricky and Matty cast him worried glances from across the studio.
For a moment, the only sound in the whole room was Caroline’s quiet gurgling.
Peter, wearing his usual teaching outfit of snug black jeans and a black T-shirt with the ANB logo on the chest, looked around the studio at them all.
His eyes landed on Justin, who forced himself to hold his boss’s gaze.
He tried to remember what he’d told Missy yesterday: Even if he hadn’t exactly meant to punch that guy… Some people deserved to get punched.
Peter looked around, confirming that he had everyone’s attention.
A former ANB dancer himself, he’d taken the role of artistic director about seven years ago and set about reforming the company to make it more equitable and more forward-looking.
He’d brought in mental health professionals to practice alongside the physios, eliminated the company’s height requirements for auditions, ended the practice of weekly weigh-ins, and allowed dancers to wear tights and shoes that matched their skin tone.
(In an effort to curb sexual harassment, he’d also instituted a well-intentioned but wildly unpopular no-dating policy among the dancers, but Heather and Marcus had blown that up.)
Peter had made some real changes at ANB.
But ballet was still ballet, and he was still the AD of a ballet company, and a four-hundred-year-old institution like ballet didn’t change overnight.
Peter wasn’t a dictator, but ANB was hardly a democracy.
So he spoke quietly, knowing that the dancers would listen closely to every word he said.
“I’m sure you’ve all seen the video that’s circulating of one of our dancers in a bar last week,” he said. A few more of his colleagues shot furtive looks over at Justin, who suddenly felt like all three of the Opera House’s spotlights had swung onto him, hot and unforgiving.
“I want to remind you that when you are out in public, whether you are wearing ANB gear or not, you are always representing this company. I expect you to comport yourselves in a manner that reflects well on all of us. This is especially important as we prepare for our tour to New York City.”
Ah yes, the tour. They’d been rehearsing for months.
Their entire summer season had been one long dress rehearsal for their one-week engagement at Lincoln Center, the company’s first appearance in New York since Peter took over.
The company would perform a mixed bill that showed off its range, from abstract contemporary ballets to a short but sparkling tutu piece.
Justin was dancing one of his favorite pieces ever, a long and dreamy pas de deux with simple costumes and terrifically complex lifts.
And he was dancing with one of the company’s emerging stars, newly promoted principal Alice Ho.
Or at least, he hoped he still was. Peter’s expression was stern as he looked around the studio, delivering the dancers a warning that was truly only meant for one person.
“This is not a good time for ANB to be in the headlines for anything other than our world-class dancing,” Peter went on, “and I will be extremely displeased if any of you does anything offstage that overshadows our much-anticipated return to New York next month.”
Translation: I will be absolutely livid if your fuck-up is in the first sentence of every review we get over there. Justin had worked for Peter McGregor long enough to be fluent in the man’s subtext.
Justin fidgeted with the waistband of his shorts, antsy and anxious to move. He didn’t particularly enjoy adagio, but suddenly he was eager for everyone to clear the barres from the center of the studio and get back to work. But Peter wasn’t done yet.
“This is an important moment in our company’s history, and we all have to do our bit to make sure it goes as we deserve.
You’ve worked hard to prepare for this tour, and I don’t want any distractions from all the effort you’ve put in and the recognition you deserve.
So I want to assure you that the administrators and I have a plan for controlling this story and ensuring that our dancing is the sole focus going into this tour. ”
He looked stonily at Justin, who understood perfectly what his boss wasn’t saying. This plan was going to involve him in some way. Peter was furious with him, and he was going to make him prove he still belonged on that tour.