February 1986 The Understudy
THE UNDERSTUDY
His energy onstage could not have been more different from his energy offstage.
The moment he was on, it was like the moon emerged from behind the dark clouds of his eyes, and an unstoppable force (several critics called it “manic”) swept him around the stage.
Gerry Dixon, long-time character artist and jolly uncle to everyone, liked to call Sander “our very own whirling dervish”.
The male dancers veered between envy, awe, and frustration; the ballerinas thanked God we didn’t have to compete with that.
We all waited for the inevitable announcement of his promotion to principal, but it didn’t come.
Sander remained first soloist for four years.
There were plenty of theories: had he somehow got into our artistic director Nick’s bad books, and now his career was being stalled in revenge?
Stephen once wondered aloud if Sander had “had it on” with Nick’s wife, before immediately scoffing at his own idea. ‘No, that can’t be it.’
Someone – maybe Fiona, maybe me – asked what made him so certain that wasn’t the reason.
‘I can’t picture it.’
I didn’t know what he meant, and yet I did.
If Sander felt bitter about this loss of momentum, it never showed.
Eventually, we let the sails of the rumour mill drag to a halt, basing our theories on what we saw with our own eyes: the most likely reason he hadn’t been promoted, might not ever be promoted, was that he was simply too tricky to partner.
Not that I could speak on that with any authority at the time.
The British Classical Ballet Company employed ninety-odd dancers, and we had three or four different casts for any given run of a full-length, so even by 1984, when I had caught up to his rank as first soloist, he was always in Cast 1 while I was Cast 3 or 4.
But, according to the handful of ballerinas who had been cast alongside him – Princess Florine to his Bluebird, Harlot to his Mercutio, Mistress to his Lescaut – he was nigh on impossible to keep up with, and had little patience for their attempts at rehearsal negotiations.
I once overheard Crystal Collins grumble, ‘He tossed me around like Dorothy in the Kansas twister. I thought I was going to land on my neck!’
As a result, Nick wisely limited him to the virtuosic male soloist roles: the Blue Boy in Les Patineurs, the Golden Idol in La Bayadère, the Russian dance in The Nutcracker. Anything that kept interaction with ballerinas to a minimum.
And then someone – it might have been Nick, might have been one of the coaches, no one remembers now – thought to try him out with Carolyn Sabouri.
Carolyn had joined the company in 1970 at the age of seventeen, when Fonteyn and Nureyev were still performing together.
Like every other girl in the corps, I’d looked up to her ever since my first company class: she’d been a principal since 1977.
By the time she was cast in the title role of Manon at the age of thirty-two, with Sander as her Des Grieux, Carolyn was a bona fide prima ballerina, a veteran of the company and our grand duchess of dance.
If anyone could meet Sander halfway in stamina and skill, it was her.
Their run of Manon went down well enough that, after experimenting with Blanca Ojeda as the Kitri to his Basilio in Don Quixote, Carolyn and Sander were cast together again the next season, as the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince in The Nutcracker.
While all of that was going on, I too became a subject of Nick’s grand partnership design: Stephen and I were paired for Manon, as Lescaut and his mistress.
I would rather have been cast with someone half my height than with Stephen, but Nick wasn’t to know that.
I’d made up my mind long ago that no one would ever know that.
In the new year, Stephen and I began rehearsing together again for the upcoming production of The Sleeping Beauty, our fourth show of the season and the first to kick off 1986.
As well as the corps roles in Acts I and II, I was due to play the Fairy of the Songbird in the Prologue and Princess Florine in Act III, with Stephen as my Fairy Cavalier and Bluebird – roles we’d danced before and grown comfortable in.
But this season, my tenth with the BCBC, was something special.
That February, I would take my long-awaited turn as Aurora.
You see, the young artists work hard, the mighty principals work harder, but the soloists work hardest of all.
Principals get rest days between performances, but the lower ranks often dance multiple roles on consecutive nights, testing the mettle of their bones, barely giving their muscles time to heal before inducing micro-tears again.
And – every now and again – trying on principal roles for size.
I felt like a child on Christmas Eve, utterly beside myself.
Debuting as Aurora would be the first of several tests before a promotion to principal dancer – perhaps I’d get to be the lead in whatever Nick chose to begin the next season.
Was it too much to hope for Juliet? We’d only just done MacMillan’s iconic take on the Shakespeare tragedy the previous season, so perhaps something else.
It was difficult not to get caught up in the hope of it all.
Every ballet student dreams of becoming a principal, just as musicians dream of first chair in the orchestra, and athletes of Olympic gold.
On Monday night, with only five sleeps between me and one of the best roles created for a ballerina, I didn’t nod off until well after three o’clock.
When I awoke to ringing in my ears, it was still offensively dark and freezing, with only the murkiest blue light creeping through the venetian blinds.
I fumbled for my alarm clock, only to realise it wasn’t due to go off for another thirty minutes.
The ringing was coming from the kitchen.
Muscles stiff, with a thin spike of pain running up my right shin that definitely hadn’t been there the day before, I rushed across chilly floorboards to my wall phone.
‘Hello,’ I said, in an uncanny imitation of my father before coffee.
‘Is that Patricia? Trix?’
I cleared my throat. ‘Yes. Who is this?’
‘It’s Nick.’
‘… Nick?’ I craned my neck to the oven clock, just to be sure I hadn’t overslept by twelve hours. ‘Uh. Good morning.’
‘Dreadfully sorry to disturb you at such an ungodly hour. Were you sleeping?’
‘Well, yes, but’ – I flipped the light switch, shrinking back from the glare – ‘not anymore. Is everything all right?’
‘I’ll get straight to the point, Trix. I know you were meant to make your debut this coming Saturday, and I’m terribly sorry…’
Now I was awake. Fully, coldly awake, and shivering.
They were taking it away from me. Another principal, from another company (Paris?
Copenhagen?) must have secured a last-minute guest contract and would be taking my spot.
My favourite purple mug was upside down on the drying rack – I was already picturing the strong cup of tea I’d need in five minutes’ time to cope with this devastating blow.
‘… but circumstances compel me to ask: how would you feel if we moved it up?’
‘Moved it up?’ Devastation left as swiftly as it had come. ‘To Friday?’
‘To tonight.’
I blinked at my reflection in the black kitchen window.
Nick poured explanations into my stunned silence: on Sunday night, as was their bi-monthly tradition, Carolyn, Blanca, Grace, Ray, Tomas, and Fabrizio (almost half our principals) had been for a long, leisurely dinner at a chic new seafood restaurant in Chelsea.
By ten o’clock the next morning, between bouts of vomiting, they were all ringing one another to commiserate and panic about opening night.
‘Opening night,’ I echoed, belatedly remembering that this was no ordinary Tuesday. ‘You want me to debut Aurora on opening night.’
‘We’re in a real bind, I’m afraid. Caro, Grace, and Blanca sound as though they’re barely capable of standing up.
Crystal’s guesting with Pacific Northwest Ballet until the weekend, and frankly even if she caught the next available flight, the jetlag would make the Act I balances a nightmare.
Amelia’s Achilles is still on the wobble, Magne’s in Oslo for her father’s funeral, and I certainly can’t ask Annie or Vee.
The height difference with Sander – well, it’s just out of the question. ’
‘Sander? Oh, goodness. Right.’ I walked the phone cord to the fridge, where a copy of the rehearsal and performance schedule for Beauty, pinned at the corners with pineapple-shaped magnets, sat above my regular calendar.
Slowly, shakily, I crossed out Carolyn’s name and wrote my own.
It looked completely wrong. ‘But we haven’t rehearsed together. For anything. Ever.’
‘Now you understand the early bird call. I didn’t want to spring this on you just before class.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, before it fully sank in, and amazement turned my kitchen light into a sunbeam. ‘Thank you.’
‘No, my dear, thank you. Right, time waits for no one. Have some coffee, pack a spare pair of pointes, hire a cat-sitter—’
‘I don’t have a cat.’
‘So much the better. I’ll book a studio for the whole afternoon so you and Sander can get started as soon as class is done. In fact, I’d recommend leaving straight after barre. You’ll get plenty of grand allegro later.’
My laugh came out shorter, louder, and more hysterical than I meant it to.
We must have said “goodbye” or “see you soon” or something, but all I remember is clicking the phone back into its cradle. I put the kettle on, then turned my purple mug over and over in my hands to feel its weight, to be sure I hadn’t just dreamt that entire conversation.
A strong cup of tea, indeed.