Apotheosis
There is no interval between Acts II and III, so our costume changes were done in a flurry of hands and setting spray.
I spritzed some Estée Lauder to get into the right mindset for Aurora and Florimund’s extravagant wedding (it’s not an Imperial Russian ballet without an extended celebration sequence).
I had a new lease of energy, shaking out my hands and feet with the abundance of it – and I noticed the pain in my shin was gone.
I stared at it, waiting for it to catch me off guard.
I leaned on it to grab my bottle of Evian for a final swig.
I walked slowly into the corridor with turned-out feet.
All quiet in my bones. I was perplexed, and cautiously thrilled.
I reached the stage right wings, where Sander was already waiting.
Dressed in wedding white, watching the soloists, a wave of gratitude suddenly hit me, not just for the chance to debut Aurora on opening night – obviously not for the fact that Carolyn was sick – but for this one-night partnership that I might never otherwise have experienced.
Sander had made Act II feel as natural as breathing.
Those feather-light lifts, the security of his grip, the accuracy with which he hit his marks – the stuff of partnering dreams. It was sad to think I’d have to go back to Stephen for the rest of the run; I wondered if Nick would ever pair me with Sander again.
When the final divertissement exited the stage, he took up my hand. We smiled at each other before smiling for the audience, the lights bringing us to life.
The grand pas de deux of Act III was the exact opposite of the spectral Act II.
Now we were in near-constant contact, especially when the orchestra rallied for the three breathtaking fish dives: I dipped teasingly on the makeshift barre of Sander’s forearm, lifted off, then pirouetted close enough to him that, just as my body threatened to tilt off its axis, he caught me around the waist and flipped me forward, my legs rising behind his shoulder, crossed at the ankles.
The dives require precision and core strength from both dancers – more than once in my rehearsals with Stephen, I’d dipped too far forward and almost broken my nose on the floor. And yet with Sander, my body felt like water pouring from the lip of a jug, a crescent moon hanging in space.
To give the pas its grand finish, Sander had to lift and immediately catch me in a pin-straight soubresaut by the knees, then swing me towards the floor as if going into another fish dive, except this time I was completely unsupported.
In the space of a single breath, I hooked my knees under his armpit, leaned across his thigh, kept my face to the audience with perfect composure, and prayed to God I would stay off the floor long enough to meet the orchestra’s final chime of piano keys.
Our arms extended outwards like magicians: Ta-da!
Applause filled the air, and didn’t stop until I’d bowed to the audience, bowed to my prince, and exited stage right. It was time for Sander to hold court, with a solo every young man dreamt of mastering for auditions and competitions.
I’d had no doubt that Sander would land his tours en l’air and articulate his feet crisply during the sidelong run-up into his cabrioles, but watching him do it was something else.
I tried to understand how, from such modest demi-pliés, he gathered enough thrust to soar so high over the rest of the cast. He had the restraint of a Danish dancer and the power of a Russian, even though (as far as anyone was aware) he hadn’t been trained in either style.
As for the brushstroke chassés that led to the sensational jetés en tournant for which BCBC fairy-tale princes were famed, the conductor is usually obliged to slow the orchestra down so the dancer can keep up, but Sander had it the other way around.
The music flurried with him as his back leg somehow extended equally as high as his front leg, making a perfect mid-air split.
Not just ten of them, as a principal might hit on an exceptionally good day, but fourteen.
Never flagging, never breaking his perfect lines.
Just as I began to worry he was in danger of outpacing the music, his white-stockinged feet made a neat full stop downstage, arm extended overhead as if holding a silver platter.
The audience’s reaction could have been heard from Scotland. As Sander bowed, stepped stage right, and bowed some more, most of the blood went from my head. I was next. I had to follow that.
Suddenly Nick’s hesitation to promote Sander made complete sense.
I’m ashamed to admit it, especially now, but in the seconds before he exited the stage to make way for my own solo, I hated him.
I hated that, whether he meant to or not, he had set the bar so high that even if I juggled fire sticks in a perfect balance, my performance would pale into obscurity by comparison.
That hatred burned for about ten seconds, by which time I’d made my entrance as regally as possible, planted myself in fourth position, and had an epiphany: of course I couldn’t match up to him.
It was impossible. And if I couldn’t pull off the impossible, all I could do was what the BCBC promised in the motto emblazoned on all our programmes, inked on the wall between the box office and the stalls bar: “breathing new life into brilliant stories”.
Gravity-defying athleticism is never the point; the reason we were all there, season after season, was to channel the spirit of the story, the emotions that transcend time.
There was only one Princess Aurora alive in the world that night: me.
Where Sander’s solo relied on bold, almost brash leaps, mine was concentrated into light, deft, contained movements.
I walked myself in a tiny square en pointe, as if dipping my feet in the shallows of a cold sea.
I let my arms luxuriate in the movement they’d been denied for a century, my face turned towards the sun.
Mariska had drilled into me that the most important thing for this solo, as with so much of ballet, was to “stay on top of the music”.
If I moved in synch with the violins as they turned their corners, then I was too late – I had to anticipate them by a quarter of a second, a near-imperceptible difference that gave the sequence its seamless flow.
I never let my concentration break my smile.
Every time the music demanded a sudden pose of me – an attitude, a retiré – I thought of it as the punctuation in a long, breathless but eloquent sentence spoken by a woman aglow with new life and gratitude to her fairy guardians.
The power of this punctuation only became visible to the audience when the orchestra upped its pace, joyful flourishes surging in time to my three sequential leg extensions, each almost skimming my ear.
The final seconds are when Aurora’s solo finds symmetry with Florimund’s: he had ten (ahem, excuse me, fourteen) jetés, I had ten pirouettes.
All the breathwork I’d done during the slower movements became vital for this final, whirlwind sprint: with the ten pirouettes done, using the farthest golden pillar to spot and recentre, I let my body carry me through a series of cha?né turns, legs tight, arches high.
The music delivered me to my finishing position – what position exactly was up to me, as long as it was one of the foundational five.
In every rehearsal, I had favoured landing in open fourth, just as I’d begun, but given how extraordinary today had been, my instincts told me to land in a tight fifth en pointe.
My instincts were wrong. As soon as I landed, I knew I’d leaned my arms too far to the right and was teetering.
I tried to save it by inching this way and that, attempting to regain balance, but no dice – I stumbled and descended onto flat feet, into the position I should have aimed for all along.
I didn’t break my smile, and the audience still applauded and cheered, but the little backseat dancer in my head declared me a perfect idiot, and reminded me that this was why tonight was Sander’s night, not mine.
If I wanted to prove I was principal material, I would have to redeem myself on Saturday.
The last thing – because there we were, we’d done it, we had somehow reached the last movement – was the Apotheosis, the final procession.
Aurora and Florimund join hands upstage and make their stately way to the audience, while the court clears a path for them.
I turned to my prince; he turned to his vision made real.
Holding eye contact with Sander was different onstage.
In costume, immersed in the majesty of Tchaikovsky’s closing bars, how could I not beam at him?
The only reason to glance away was so he could hold me by the waist in a final, regal arabesque penché.
I rose from it, leg extended, and pivoted to face the audience, my arms raised high, my prince holding me steady.
The orchestra put everything they had into the farewell note, and the curtains came down.