Chapter 7
When Tatyanna didn’t hear from the Polish National Ballet about an audition, she decided to go and see them again.
She had been trying to do all she could to bolster Yulya’s spirits and support her, as quietly as she could.
She kept the children busy and even cooked for them when Yulya was too upset to do so.
Yulya was thinking about getting a job, so she wouldn’t be a burden on her brother, but she couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t focus, and couldn’t sleep.
She got up exhausted every morning. Symon had vanished.
She had told the children two days after it had happened and they were upset too.
Yulya told them that she was hopeful that they’d find him, but she didn’t want to give them false hopes and mislead them. But she was clinging to hope herself.
While the children were at school being tutored in Polish, Tatyanna went back to the ballet in Warsaw, and saw the same woman at the reception desk, who directed her to the main office.
Tatyanna politely reminded them that she had filled out an application, and requested an audition and had never heard back from them.
Her halting Polish had improved considerably since she’d arrived.
The woman at the desk said they had been very busy with a new creative director and choreographer, and changes they were making at the school.
She asked if Tatyanna had been taking classes anywhere, and she didn’t want to admit that she couldn’t afford to.
For the first time in her life she hadn’t danced in over a month, since the war began, nearly two months now.
And then she explained that she was a refugee from Kyiv, and reminded the woman that she had trained at the Kyiv Choreographic College and danced at the Kyiv National Ballet.
The woman at the desk looked at her more closely.
“How long have you been in Warsaw?” she asked.
“Only a few weeks. I came at the end of March, a month after the war started.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” The woman excused herself and disappeared into an office, and came back ten minutes later.
She was followed by a thin, athletic-looking man with white hair and intense blue eyes.
He was wearing jeans and a black sweater, and Tatyanna could tell from the way he moved that he was a dancer.
He was thinner but he reminded her a little of Vlad, or what Vlad might have looked like when he got older, in twenty or thirty years.
The woman from the desk introduced him as Nikolai, their new director.
“You’re a refugee?” he asked her gently in Ukrainian, and she nodded. “You escaped the war with your family?”
“No, I’m here alone. I have no family. I grew up at the school in Kyiv. I’m staying with friends.”
“Before anything else, I would like to offer you free classes. Daily, if you like.” And then he smiled. “You have trained with Natalya Fedorova?”
“Yes.” Tatyanna returned the smile. It gave her a warm feeling now, thinking about Madame Natalya.
She was part of another life, a life with Vlad and the school and Yana.
She didn’t know what had happened to Madame Natalya in the war.
She hoped she was still alive, although the school had been bombed and was partially destroyed and severely damaged.
“I trained at the Bolshoi,” Nikolai said, “and she was my worst nightmare. She told me I was the most terrible dancer she had ever seen and I should become a street sweeper.” She had said things like that to Vlad when he was younger, and he had actually cried.
Tatyanna laughed, thinking of her old teacher.
“I really miss her,” she said softly. And the life she had lost only weeks before. It felt like a lifetime ago now. And just being in the building of the Polish National Ballet made her feel comfortable, and brought back happy memories.
“I heard that the school was badly damaged in the bombing,” he said sadly.
“That’s a tragedy. We’re having auditions this afternoon, but if you feel ready for an informal audition with me, I have the time now.
” Once Nikolai knew that Tatyanna was a refugee, he wanted to do everything he could to help her.
“I filled out an application two weeks ago for the ballet, but I would be willing to do anything, work in an office, teach the younger classes, sweep the stage, clean the theater,” she said seriously, and his heart went out to her.
She looked so poignant and so young and earnest, and he realized that she must have been through so much before she got there.
She was excited at the idea of an informal audition, but suddenly she felt lost without Vlad and Madame Natalya.
What if she failed abysmally? But she had meant what she said, and would have been willing to clean the theater if they wouldn’t hire her for the ballet.
Just being there thrilled her. It was something familiar, and was the only life she’d known until then.
“I haven’t been able to go to class since the war began.
They shut down immediately, canceled performances and classes, and I left pretty soon after.
My dance partner was killed after I left.
Now the theater and the school have been destroyed.
I’m sure I’m very stiff after not dancing for so long.
” She had done a few stretching exercises every morning, but she hadn’t danced.
“I won’t tell Madame Natalya if I see her,” he teased her. He felt terrible for the trauma she had been through. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Eighteen. I’ve lived at the school since I was four, and I started dancing at three.” She had put it all in her application, which he obviously hadn’t seen.
“Did you bring your shoes with you?” he asked her, and she blushed as she smiled.
“I did, just in case.” He spoke Ukrainian to her, peppered with English, which she had learned slightly from some of her tutors.
“We can use a recording for the piano,” Nikolai said.
“I’ll show you where the dressing rooms are.
I’ll give you half an hour to warm up, so you don’t hurt yourself,” he said, and led her down a flight of marble stairs.
She followed him with a light step, excited at the prospect.
His name, Nikolai, had sounded familiar to her.
The dressing room was big and beautiful.
He left her there, and pointed to a large classroom across the hall.
No one was practicing, and he went back upstairs to his office, and said he would come back to her in half an hour, after she warmed up.
She put her leotard on and her pink satin toe shoes, and walked across the hall to the classroom and went straight to the barre.
It felt so good to stretch and go through the familiar exercises she was used to doing every day.
She hadn’t done them since her last class with Madame Natalya, and her eyes filled with tears as she thought of Vlad and tried to imagine that he was in the room watching her, or dancing with her.
When Nikolai came back half an hour later, she felt warm and limber.
She’d felt stiff at first, but after half an hour she no longer did.
Her muscles were trained to do everything she had practiced so many times for so many years.
Her body and her stance looked perfect to Nikolai as she walked toward him, and he programmed a computerized sound system and turned to her.
“What would you like?” Tatyanna knew how unusual this was, an audition with the director of the ballet, and being able to select her own music.
In normal auditions, the director selected the music, and usually chose something to make it as difficult as possible, to see what applicants could do.
She wasn’t nervous about dancing, she longed to feel her body floating and flying and in full control again.
“Swan Lake, in honor of Madame Natalya?” Tatyanna suggested, and he could already guess what a strong dancer she must be.
It was a difficult choice, especially not having danced for over a month.
As the music started, he left her alone, and went to sit in a chair at some distance from her, so he could get a theatrical impression.
She knew the piece by heart, and had practiced it and performed it hundreds of times.
As Nikolai watched her, Tatyanna metamorphosed from a timid young girl who had been through a war and was standing in an unfamiliar classroom in a country she didn’t know, suddenly becoming the exquisite ballerina she had been trained to be by one of the best teachers he knew.
She needed a partner for part of it, and as she danced through it, she imagined Vlad next to her, lifting her, dancing with her, and danced her part with exquisite leaps.
She floated through the jumps and sailed on her own, and didn’t lose a split second as she glided into the next part.
She forgot time and where she was and felt the music lift her and carry her.
Her body responded to what she was feeling and all that she knew.
He stopped the music after half an hour, and she looked startled when the room went silent.
She had completely forgotten where she was as she danced.
Nikolai was looking at her intensely. She was one of the finest dancers he had seen in years.
“Tatyanna,” he said seriously. “You should be in the Bolshoi. Madame Natalya would be proud of you.”
“She was going to send us to the Bolshoi, my partner and me, later this year…and now…” She had to fight back tears. “He died, and it can never happen.”