Chapter 18
COPPéLIA
Coppélia is in many ways the opposite of Beauty – no fairies or century-old curses, just human chaos and celebration.
But the lead role of Swanilda is no less demanding than Aurora: she appears within the first two minutes of the ballet and spends more time onstage than off.
The ballerina who dances her needs stamina, unassailable pointework, expressive acting, and effortless charm.
The winter chill dragged on into April, but the drawing room scenes of Enigma Variations conjured the illusion of sunlit spring, while Coppélia rehearsals kept morale up in the studios.
Whenever the corps went off to the Pavlova studio to mark out the Act I group dances, I would go a few doors further up to the Markova, for private rehearsals with Sander.
I’d barely seen him since our second and final turn as Aurora and Florimund.
Once again, he had sailed through it, and brought me along for the ride.
After that, we’d exchanged only a handful of greetings in the wings during the stage and curtain calls for Enigma Variations.
Carolyn had been right on the money: he was a true gentleman, but also a walking question mark.
Despite keeping an eye out, there were no further sightings of his peculiar little pocket watch.
Apart from greeting me when I walked into the Markova, he didn’t say a thing.
In fact, his reserves of enthusiasm for the first hour were decidedly low.
It wasn’t until a few minutes into partnering that I realised why that might be.
Unlike Prince Florimund, Franz gets to hop into the action early on with the rest of the town, but in order for Swanilda to shine once the group dances are through, his job is to take it slow and stay rooted to the floor – two things that didn’t seem to come naturally to Sander.
Our first pas de deux saw him promenade me in a few circles and grip my hand so that I could achieve the deepest possible penché; he was a living barre.
His restlessness was like static electricity, and I could only hope that our character work, where we focused on the acting and mime more than the steps, would clear some of it from the air.
Franz and Swanilda are like the homecoming king and queen of their little town, with the mayor himself keen to ensure they’ll be married in time to celebrate the arrival of a new church bell.
But Franz is, as Fiona put it, “an incorrigible flirt”, and can’t resist blowing a kiss up to the window where the life-sized doll Coppélia sits with her book, or dancing with one of the local girls during the mazurka.
When Sander and I stood either side of Salvatore, who acted as our rehearsal mayor and pointed to his ring finger with an expectant look, I adopted my best pout and wagged my finger: Nuh-uh.
Cupped my hands to the left side of my chest, then sliced them through the air in a cross: He loves me not.
‘You are upset!’ Mariska called from the side, as Sander finally got to do something active and lift me onto the perch of his shoulder.
I was still getting used to the propulsion of his arms – it’s tricky to stay in character when ascending at the speed of a match-point tennis ball. ‘Your wedding is at stake!’
‘Sorry, sorry, can we—?’ I said as Sander set me down just as rapidly. ‘Could you go a little slower please?’
‘Slower?’ he repeated with a faint sigh.
The Beauty rehearsals had been so quick and charged with anxiety that there hadn’t been much time to pause and make requests.
Now there was room for me to disappoint him.
But I wouldn’t be tossed about like Crystal or the other ballerinas – I was determined to follow Carolyn’s example and make this work.
‘Just a little. If it’s not too much trouble.’
We tried again. To his credit, he was more deliberate with the rise and descent, and I was able to concentrate on my emoting.
But towards the end of the day, when we progressed to the final wedding coda, our speed mismatch reappeared.
I pitied Lori as much as myself – her eyes kept darting from Sander to the piano keys as she tried to stay on top of his whip-sharp jetés en tournant, before being obliged to put the brakes on when I tried, unsuccessfully, to match his pace.
Delibes’s final piece is joyfully vigorous, but its galop waits for no one, not even a dancer who has to hop backwards in an arabesque. En pointe.
‘Again,’ Mariska declared, twirling an unlit cigarette between her fingers and trying to keep a yawn behind her smile. ‘You’re still lagging, Trix.’
We had been in the Markova for two hours straight; despite stuffing my pointes with an extra layer of cotton wool, my poor toes were crying out for a break.
Coppélia has had many choreographic hands in the mix over the decades, and I couldn’t remember if it was Petipa, Ivanov, Cecchetti, or Ninette de Valois (aka “Madame”) who had decided to pepper this ballet so liberally with toe hops, so I silently cursed all of them for good measure.
The final galop, and everything leading up to it, required pointework as quick as raindrops.
This is the glory and the agony of Coppélia: there isn’t a moment to conserve energy or take shortcuts.
The only way to propel yourself to the end is by giving 100 per cent every time.
For all the high stakes of the stage performance, at least you only have to do it once.
Trying to give 100 per cent multiple times in quick succession is just an exercise in diminishing returns.
My body was tired, my French twist was coming apart strand by strand, and I was fed up with attempting something I knew wouldn’t happen, certainly not without a break.
‘I’m sorry, it—’ I bent double with breathlessness. ‘It’s too fast, I just… I can’t manage it yet.’
The “yet” was what saved me from one of Mariska’s rants.
She always knew what to say to put dancers at ease, but that didn’t mean she shied away from sternness.
I waited for her to suggest a break, but she just lit her cigarette and stared me down with infuriating patience.
Brushing hair out of my face, I turned on Sander.
‘Are you really incapable of slowing down by, oh, I don’t know, an eighth? The string section may actually catch fire if they try to keep up with you.’
He blinked at me, long and deliberate, as if resisting the urge to roll his eyes.
‘The music does deserve breathing room,’ Mariska conceded between puffs, before looking to our conductor, who had been observing us from behind his heavily annotated scorebook. ‘Valentin, what say you?’
‘Yes, Delibes demands lively galop, but right now galop is more… avalanche. Snowball,’ he decided, whirling his fists through the air for effect.
‘Come on, Sander,’ Salvatore added. ‘Remember what I told you. The ballerina always has the last word.’
Sander raised his hands in deference. We walked it back all the way to the start of his solo, which he did as if for the first time, every jump fresh, no height lost even at the marginally slower speed.
I bit down on my pain and threw myself into the coda with dispassionate determination, as if the studio floor was made of hot tar.
I blatantly ignored every correction I’d been given over the last forty minutes for the sake of getting through the blasted sequence as quickly as possible.
At last, Sander and I met in the middle and ran upstage together, backs to the audience, preparing to hop on the wagon that carried the town’s shiny new bell and stand under a shower of confetti.
Salvatore insisted we see it all the way through to the final note, so back we ran into the centre, pretending to be above everyone else.
The hug between Swanilda and Franz felt like the fingertip touch to a finish line at a race; I gladly leaned all my body weight against Sander’s upright frame until Salvatore called for our long-awaited fifteen-minute break.
I hadn’t expected the hug to feel as good as it did.
The back of Sander’s T-shirt was dry and crisp, as if he’d only just slipped it off a hanger.
His heart wasn’t beating like someone who’d just drilled the same coda five times in a row.
It brought my own heart rate right down, until my breath came in languid waves, and everything felt peaceful.
‘Well?’ he said, pulling back from me. I looked up at him, unsure of his tone, until I realised he was simply asking “Are you well?”
‘I will be,’ I said, trying to laugh off the strain of the last two hours while shaking out my feet. ‘Sorry. I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Swanilda’s quite the mouthful.’
Another partner might have teased me for throwing a strop – Stephen always did – but Sander maintained his default, polite silence.
Once Valentin left to practise with the orchestra and we resumed rehearsals, Mariska threw me a lifeline by suggesting we return to Act I, not for the first pas de deux but the pas d’action – all the little scenes between Swanilda and Franz where they’re not playing to the audience so much as to each other.
Lori repeatedly plinked one of the piano keys as a stand-in for the cowbell that would represent the racket from Dr Coppélius’s workshop, startling the townsfolk below.
The noise unsettles Swanilda so much that her squabbles with Franz over his incorrigible flirting are briefly forgotten, and she scurries behind him for safety.
‘More expressive, Sander – “Well, well, not so annoyed with me now, are you?” Good. Better.’
‘Don’t be afraid to hold on to him, Trix. This is the first time we see her actually frightened.’