First Lift
As advised, I left the women’s class at the midpoint break, when the barres were moved to the side and the ballerinas donned their pointe shoes.
The studio echoed with the pop and pluck of elastic and ribbons, the thwacks of new pairs being broken in patiently with tiny hammers, or chaotically against floorboards and walls.
While I gathered my things, Fiona looked up from wrapping protective pads around her toes, and gave me a lively smile.
‘You’ll be fine,’ she said over the din. ‘You always are.’
She’d been quick to dole out encouragement and praise for as long as I’d known her – where the other girls at the British Ballet Academy had offered a polite and entirely neutral “hello” on our first day of term, she’d waved eleven-year-old me over to the newly made beds and said, ‘Gosh, your posture’s so good. The teachers will love you.’
When I’d apprised her of the casting change before class had begun, her jaw had almost hit the barre.
There was excitement in her expression, a healthy dose of envy, but above all, surprise: according to Nick’s unspoken grand design, Stephen was “my” partner.
The audience didn’t know what had happened between us in the past – all that mattered was that we photographed well together, had similar colouring, complemented each other in height, and had learned how to bring out each other’s strengths onstage.
He was still due to be my Prince Florimund on Saturday, but today I had to contend with an unknown quantity.
Sander and I had the right height gap to be suitable partners; beyond that, I really had no idea.
I had always been told my body was made for ballet, even while being trained to doubt it every day at school.
I wasn’t too tall – 5’9” en pointe, 5’5” at rest – and my metabolism hadn’t failed me yet.
My lines were clean, my proportions pleasing, my arches ideal.
But even after ten years with the BCBC, I had nothing on Sander’s raw talent.
Carolyn had already been principal for coming up to a decade, and had amassed enough star power to attract audiences regardless of what show she was in.
How on earth was I supposed to match that?
I pulled a white practice tutu off the communal tutu tree in the corridor.
The entire building felt quiet. It wouldn’t come alive until mid-afternoon, when the box office staff would attend to the phones and begin organising tonight’s tickets for collection, the stylists would check all the wigs were labelled correctly and that no one needed to do a last-minute run to Boots for hairspray, and the costumiers would re-appliqué any rhinestones that had flown off during dress rehearsals.
I checked the giant company-wide pinboard for my name, finding it under the studio named after our founding mother, Alicia Markova.
MARKOVA STUDIO
Patricia Errington, Aleksander Sylvan
The Sleeping Beauty
11:00 – 15:45
Eight hours until curtain up. Four hours to re-learn the entire ballet with a new partner. Crumbs.
The Markova was an intimate, windowless studio, the world reduced to three mirrors and a piano.
Before I opened the door, the thin spike of pain went through my shin again, as if a stinging nettle had been pulled up the inside.
I’d been hoping it was just an early morning ache from the cold, but dancers can tell “good” pain from bad pain.
I felt light-headed. Up until that point in my career, I had managed to avoid any serious injury; the spectre of it was the last thing I needed today.
I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing, and stepped inside.
Lori, one of our long-time session pianists, sat at the black Steinway in the corner, arranging her sheet music.
Nick was talking to Mariska and Salvatore, two of the BCBC’s most experienced and respected coaches.
Mariska was tough, but trustworthy. She had danced Aurora enough times that the role was like a beloved old coat.
She knew the exhaustion, the fear, the margins of error, and had been my lifeline throughout rehearsals.
It was a real tonic to see her in the studio.
She was holding two discussions at the same time: one in English with Nick, and the other in Italian with Sal, who was there to oversee the Prince. Not that he needed it.
Sander was the only one who noticed me as I unloaded my accoutrements in a corner. He had shucked his leg warmers and wrapped a bandana under his fringe, and watched in silence as I pulled on my pointes.
‘Woman of the hour!’ Nick strode across the studio and clasped my hands in his.
He absolutely towered over me, and the streak of silver in his curly brown hair gave him the air of a mad scientist in a woollen jumper, but I had never found him intimidating the way so many directors and choreographers could be.
It helped that he never called the ballerinas “girls”.
‘I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am.’
‘Well, let’s wait until after the show,’ I said, even though now was hardly the moment for self-deprecation.
‘We’re going to run through the pas de deux in Acts II and III.’ Mariska chopped one palm against the other. ‘Lightning fast.’
‘Yes, I want to steer clear of anything in Act I,’ Nick said. ‘None of your solos. We can’t have you depleted before the performance.’
I nodded, leaning ever so slightly on my left leg until the pain in my right went quiet again. I had paracetamol in my bag, if I really needed it. It would be fine. It had to be fine.
‘Now, your prince.’ Nick stepped aside theatrically to clear a path for Sander. We shook hands, and I said good morning, because it felt odd to go into a four-hour rehearsal without saying anything.
‘Good morning,’ he said. I’d heard his voice so rarely that its rich timbre caught me off guard. I had always thought his eyes were dark brown like mine, but up close they were cut with flecks of honey and hazel. ‘Thank you for doing this.’
‘My pleasure.’ My nerves, my terror, my all.
‘Shall we?’ Salvatore caught Lori’s attention. ‘Act II, Pas d’action, Aurora appears…’
Sander and I dropped our handshake. He walked into the centre, while I went to what we were treating as stage left.
Sal took a seat on a folding chair next to Nick, while Mariska stood in for the Lilac Fairy, the role Fiona was due to debut on Saturday in the hope of an eventual promotion to first soloist. I focused on my preparatory breathing and went up and down on demi-pointe, trying to shake off the jitters.
Nothing should be a surprise here: Stephen and I had put weeks of rehearsal into this exact choreography.
My body knew what to do. Everything else was a matter of adjustment.
Lori played the end of the scene that led into the pas d’action, which moves the story forward: Prince Florimund sees a vision – a sort of astral projection from behind the locked palace gates – of Aurora in white.
It’s their first dance together, but it doesn’t really count because it will all disappear within seconds like smoke.
It’s the tantalising hope that keeps Aurora’s soul going while she’s trapped inside her own sleeping body, and gives Florimund the courage to follow the Lilac Fairy to the abandoned palace to break the spell.
Tchaikovsky, the first composer to create scores specifically with ballet steps in mind, thoughtfully left a pronounced pause in the music that acts as Aurora’s cue.
I stepped into an attitude, face blank, going for an air of mystery, before launching into jetés and pirouettes, the piano jumping along with me as if I were a spool of ribbon unfurling, staying just out of Sander’s reach.
‘Follow her all the way,’ Sal called from the side, as Sander did just that.
He stopped short of me as I finished in an arabesque, refusing to meet his eye.
This is the first exposure Aurora has had to the waking world in a century – the connection must feel so tenuous, like a crackling phone line.
I imagined how it would feel to be alone for so long, and then for a stranger to appear out of the dark.
She would barely be able to entertain the idea of someone reaching out to her, even as she reversed into his hands and he lifted her above his head.
Aurora isn’t meant to gasp in that lift, but I did.
It was impossible not to. I was high above him, my legs flexed and hyperextended like scissors, hamstrings gently burning.
I’d been waiting for Sander to take a breath, like the quiet grunt Stephen always made before balancing me on the tense brackets of his wrists.
But suddenly, seamlessly, I was a cirrus cloud. Weightless.
‘Good, very good,’ Sal said, which I had never heard from him so early in a session.
‘That looks lovely,’ Mariska said. ‘You feel okay, Trix?’
‘Perfect,’ I said, bewildered. Sander hadn’t made a sound, his arms rock-steady even as he walked back to the centre and set me down with the same care one would use to place an angel on a Christmas tree.