Entr’acte
ENTR’ACTE
As soon as the four suitors carried me offstage, I was whisked to the dressing room, where I took long pulls of water and devoured a tiny packet of pretzels for fuel.
I looked longingly at the box of paracetamol on my table, but I’d already taken some before going on.
Other soloist friends had made the mistake of upping the dosage when they really needed to, only to find that the next time, they needed even more.
A dancer’s pain threshold is higher than the average person’s; trying to outsmart it with pills is like trying to outrun a speeding train.
The pain in my shin, together with the mini-comedown from the rush of Act I, made me tremble. The pretzels turned to wet cardboard in my mouth. I changed into my costume for Act II and watched my face in the mirror until it went blank, to match the trance Aurora would be in fifteen minutes later.
Many of the classical full-lengths have a “white act”: swans by the moonlit lake, snowflakes in The Nutcracker, vengeful ghosts in Giselle, the shades in La Bayadère, and tonight nymphs who would make way for me in a white tutu and diadem.
I had to be at my lightest and most ethereal, betraying no pain.
Aurora arrives late to the ballet, but not as late as the man who will save her: Prince Florimund.
Back in my leg warmers and gilet so my muscles wouldn’t go cold, I watched from the wings as Act II opened on a hunting party.
A hundred years had passed, so baroque ruffs and gold filigree had been replaced by tricorn hats and waistcoats.
Once the hunting party were onstage in a semi-circle, Sander made his entrance.
The applause came from all directions: no one had purchased tonight’s tickets intending to see me, but his name was on the original cast sheet.
They couldn’t wait to see what he would do.
The Prince is supposedly leading this hunting party, but his mind is on other, more philosophical things.
He keeps looking out to the audience, almost breaking the fourth wall, seeking something beyond endless frivolity and royal obligations.
The countess, who never lets her eyes stray from him, tries to rope him into a game, but he’s not remotely interested.
Eventually, one of his friends spots a beast offstage.
Well then, the Prince mimes, all surface charm.
The hunt is on! He holds back, gestures to the countess that he’ll see her later and then, finally, he’s alone with his existential crisis.
Sander arabesqued into a penché, extending his anguish like a shadow.
The carriage of his arms, the way he raised or lowered his head, the light of his gaze on a fixed point in the distance, gave his prince layers: he appreciated the solitude, but not the loneliness.
It plagued him, making his world smaller and darker, harder to breathe in. He was spellbinding.
Then – lo and behold! – Annie appeared upstage, eyes bright with the possibility that this prince could be the one capable of bringing an entire kingdom back to life.
As Sander bowed before her and listened to her mimed offer, I stepped out of my leg warmers. When I came into the light, I held myself very differently from the Aurora who had just turned sixteen. Now, I was an Aurora whose body hadn’t aged a day, but whose soul had aged a century.
During my ballet school days, I never really “got” the vision sequence.
Having been raised on Disney’s 1959 Sleeping Beauty, most of Act II in Petipa’s rendition seemed like a weak attempt to bridge the narrative gap between two complete strangers whose love at first semi-consensual kiss would otherwise be too absurd to believe.
It was only as I advanced through the company, sat in on rehearsals, watched archive footage of past Auroras, and listened to the score on cassette, that I began to see it from a new angle.
In a prolonged state of sleep, the only freedom left to Aurora is her freedom to dream.
Her only connection to the outside world is a supernatural one, the Lilac Fairy her only waking ally.
A hundred years is plenty of time to perfect the art of dream communication, astral projection, what have you.
Aurora and Florimund can only touch one another on a superficial, spectral plane, their encounters as fleeting as dawn mist. But the yearning they convey, the vulnerability with which they meet and join hands, is as strong a foundation for their relationship as anything they could have accomplished in waking life.
It’s certainly more genuine than what Aurora has with her suitors in Act I.
I held my breath as Sander raised me high above his head for the first of four lifts.
Back on the ground, he tried to take my shoulder, but I turned away at the last moment.
The corps ballerinas came between us in their tulle dresses – I looped around them, and he followed me.
His hands perched on my waist, giving me the ideal momentum for crisp, speedy turns.
I avoided making more eye contact with him than absolutely necessary – that had to come later, when he danced with the real, flesh-and-blood Aurora.
By the vision’s end, Florimund needs no further convincing: he will follow the Lilac Fairy to the ends of the earth if it means he can meet his dream girl in person.
Sander and Annie stepped into her fairy gondola and, through the magic of a remote control and a healthy dose of dry ice, slowly wound around the stage.
The Entr’acte is all shadows and suspense, sustained by haunting flutes.
It matched my mood as I got into position backstage, behind the screen where the undisturbed royal bedchamber lay in wait.
The string section covered my gasp as I knelt on the bedspread, the pain in my shinbone like an electric shock.
When it receded, I lowered myself onto the pillows and flattened my tutu around me.
I could have cried at the unfairness of the pain, this uninvited guest that was almost certainly a stress fracture, threatening to sabotage what was meant to be the greatest night of my career and the first of many more to come.
In a more merciful world, Petipa would have decided to end the ballet when Aurora wakes up. But we still had an entire act to go, with all the notorious tricks and yet another balance…
As the wind section grew louder, signalling that the Lilac Fairy had overpowered Carabosse outside the gates, allowing her and Florimund to enter, my eyes snapped open in the dark.
We hadn’t rehearsed the kiss.
No one had even mentioned it in the studio. We’d been so focused on locking down the steps that anything which didn’t involve footwork or port de bras had been tossed aside.
The Beauty kiss is relatively chaste, over in three seconds, and the audience doesn’t see it so much as they see the back of Florimund’s head eclipsing Aurora’s face.
But as I lay in the dark, which quickly shifted to the warm glow of the stage lights, the thought that a man I hardly knew was about to kiss me in front of two thousand people almost made my pointed feet shake with anxiety.
In order to maintain the illusion of comatose sleep, I forced myself to imagine that I’d been preserved in a plaster cast.
I had shared this kiss with Stephen enough times in rehearsal, and others with him offstage – though I didn’t want to remember those if I could help it.
My heart pounded in my ears as I followed the music, and the scent of Sander’s cologne.
It is very difficult to keep all the muscles in your face still when someone else’s shadow passes over you. When their lips brush yours.
Stephen usually made the kiss business-like, a means to the end of the scene, but Sander’s was gentle, and slow. My entire body warmed as if I’d sunk into a bath. Time fell away like a shawl. My chest lifted, and my arms opened to help me sit up. Our faces parted; I opened my eyes.
Aurora sees her prince, really sees him, for the first time.