May 1987 Preparation
PREPARATION
The experience strengthened Charlie’s and Jamie’s friendship with Sander – Charlie loved that no demand was too difficult, no trick too outlandish to repeat night after night, while Sander loved that his only limitations in rehearsal were the length of his Vivaldi piece and the boundaries of the stage.
Jamie paid close attention to them both, the eternal student that every dancer should be.
‘Must say, I much prefer being on this side of the studio with Sander,’ Charlie told me. ‘Working with him, rather than trying to hold myself to his standard. I guess that’s how you and the other girls feel all the time. Well, mostly you.’
* * *
The day before our stage call for La Bayadère, Fiona and I spent a few hours shopping for new leotards and dance skirts, then went back to mine to spend time prepping pointe shoes.
Full-lengths with lots of complicated pointework absolutely hoovered up shoes – I’d been going through at least four pairs a week during rehearsals – so whenever the two of us had long evenings of darning and sewing ahead of us, we teamed up to make the whole process less laborious.
We sat cross-legged on my sofa with Diana Ross’s “Chain Reaction” on the radio, the heady chemical smell of shellac slow to find its way out of the kitchen window.
‘How do you feel about the Shades now?’ I asked her. ‘Ready to lead the way?’
Fiona gave me an ambivalent look between arcs of her Stanley knife, scraping the soles of her third pair of shoes to make them less wobbly.
‘Imogen lost her balance on the second slope yesterday and grabbed onto my foot just as I was about to come out of my arabesque. If she does that again tomorrow, I will not be held legally responsible for my actions.’
‘I’m sure she’ll get it together. Always better that things go wrong in the stage call than on opening night.’
‘True.’ She bopped her head back and forth to Diana Ross’s trills. ‘Do you feel ready? Is Roksana happy?’
‘Hard to tell. The most encouraging thing she’s ever said to me in the studio is “Okay.” But given how the others have found her, I’ll take it.’
Roksana Kutuzova was our director and guest coach for her new staging of La Bayadère.
As a student of the hardcore Vaganova method, and one of the first Soviet ballerinas to defect to the West, she was the very embodiment of steely Russianness styled in an endless supply of chic headscarves.
She’d made Violeta cry and Crystal scream into a dressing room cushion, and had allegedly thrown a glass of water in Dmitri’s face when he flubbed his Act III solo.
The whole process had made me an anxious schoolgirl again, doing my best to avoid the sting of an old-fashioned teacher’s cane at the barre.
I cleared my throat, then held my back straight and raised an unimpressed eyebrow. ‘Vaaat is this? Vy is your face so blank? Not sad, you are devastated! And your bourrée, vaaat vas that?’
Fiona wheezed with laughter. ‘Was she right, though?’
‘Oh, completely. She’s tough as nails, but she’s a living legend.’ With hindsight, I was glad that Mariska had been so tough on me during our Giselle rehearsals; in fact, I was now sure she’d done it deliberately.
As Phil Collins and Philip Bailey took over the airwaves with “Easy Lover”, I added my fourth pair of shoes to the growing line on my coffee table, their peach and white ribbons trailing off the edge like streamers.
We took a break, stretching out our hands and standing with socked feet in first position while we let a couple of teabags steep.
Fiona chewed on her thumbnail the way she always did when faced with a dilemma.
‘If I ask you something, will you be honest with me?’
‘Of course,’ I said, praying it wasn’t whether Nick would ever make her a principal.
Beyond her initial congratulations to me, and passing comments that I was missed in corps rehearsals, we hadn’t spoken about the sizeable gap between our ranks in the company.
I didn’t want to put my foot in it by trying to play fortune-teller.
‘Are you and Sander a thing?’
It took my brain a moment to make sense of the question. ‘What?’
‘Are you sleeping together?’
‘What— No!’ I busied myself with the teabags to hide my face, even though my answer indicated that I shouldn’t have had anything to hide. ‘God, Fiona, what on earth are you talking about?’
‘I’m not accusing you of a crime.’
‘Sorry, I just— You caught me off guard.’
‘But that’s just what I mean, Trix – I want you to be off guard sometimes, because you’re always on guard.’ She patted my arm. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I know you don’t like talking about sex and romance and all that.’
‘I like romance. I just don’t talk about sex because there’s nothing for me to talk about.’
I added milk to our teas and returned to the sofa, hoping she’d change the subject.
‘Are you really so surprised I’m asking? And – just for the avoidance of doubt – you’re definitely not seeing each other?’
‘We are not having sex. Never have, never…’ I sipped my tea even though it was too hot. Never will. That would always be true, whether he was gay, bisexual, or anything else.
‘But the chemistry between the two of you, it’s incredible.’
‘So I’m told.’
‘Good God, Trix, we’re surrounded by mirrors all day and yet you can’t see what’s right in front of you. Surely you realise that the more lead roles you dance together, the more everyone will talk.’
‘For all I know, they already are.’
Fiona glanced off and took a long, pronounced pull from her tea.
‘Oh. Excellent.’
‘What can I say? Every girl in the corps wishes she were you, and I don’t just mean professionally.’
I tried to hide my smile in my tea, then took up my fifth pair of shoes.
I would rehearse in these ones enough to break them in, making them nice and soft for maximum ghostliness.
I cut the ends of the ribbons into a triangle so I would know that pair was for Act III on sight. ‘Anyway, enough about me—’
‘Not so fast! We’re not done yet.’
‘Fee, there’s nothing to be done with. Sander and I are stage partners. Friends.’
‘You don’t want to be more than friends?’
I tried to concentrate on my darning and let silence end the discussion for me, but Fiona had always been good at silent stand-offs, almost as good as Sander. I looked up and saw a half-smile: Come on, what are fifteen years of friendship worth if you can’t confide in me?
‘I get to step out on that stage and call him my prince in a dozen different ways. What more could I possibly want?’
It was all I could give her. It was all I could articulate.
Finally, she let me change the subject to her own sex life, or lack thereof. I narrowed my eyes. ‘You haven’t…?’
‘Oh, Christ no, I haven’t phoned him.’
‘Good. I’m not exactly the leading expert on love, but I know Julian is bad news.’
Fiona pulled a face. ‘Trix, we were never in love. In lust, absolutely. He was so good.’ She stared mournfully into the middle distance, then mimed slowly moving a cube through the air. ‘If only I could take that passion, that instinct, and just… transplant it into someone else.’
‘Anyone in particular?’ She and Jamie were frequent stage partners, but there had never been any doubt over which way he was inclined. ‘How about Max?’
‘I would be lying if I said I’d never considered it…
but no. I think I need someone completely new, from outside the Dance Hall.
And soon. I always feel like this when summer’s around the corner.
I want to wriggle into a pair of hotpants, have a gorgeous man buy me a cocktail and then ravish me for about six hours. Is that so much to ask?’
I’d never been able to wrap my head around that – craving physical intimacy so ferociously that it wasn’t even directed at anyone in particular.
My closest approximation was the feeling of intense hunger, ready to devour the first thing on offer.
But then, a human can only go so many days without food; no one in the history of the world has ever died from lack of sex.
‘Maybe over the summer break,’ she continued, throwing down her final pair of pointe shoes. She’d got through hers faster because I was taking the extra step of shellacking, which involved leaving each pair to dry overnight. ‘Shame you won’t be around to help me look.’
‘Sorry.’ Guilt crept back in. My diary for July and August was blocked out with flights, galas, and guest residencies. ‘Sander’s in high demand, and I’m part of the deal.’
‘Um, excuse me, you are both in high demand. Tomorrow will drive the point home if nothing else.’ She chuckled and put her hand inside one of the shoes, holding it up like a sock puppet. ‘Drive the pointe home.’
I pointed to her bracelet with green and pink glass beads. ‘Is that new?’
‘I made it last night. Was wondering when you’d notice.’
‘You made it yourself? Gosh, that’s good work. It looks worthy of a Parisian boutique.’
Fiona took her hand out of the pointe shoe and patted her cheeks, feigning blush. ‘Who knows, maybe one day I’ll have my own. Not in Paris, but right here. Sometimes I look up and down Neal’s Yard, scouting for prime spots.’
‘Really?’ I was startled. Fiona had been a dab hand at friendship bracelets when we were at the BBA, but I didn’t know she’d taken the hobby up again. Was this a recent development? Had I been too busy this season to pay attention? ‘How long have you been thinking about that?’
‘On and off, you know. I try not to let the future steer me too much, otherwise I might as well just retire now. But you’ve got to keep these things on the backburner, you know?’
I knew. But knowing something wasn’t the same as acting on it. I tried to think of a way to get us back to the present, to La Bayadère, but Fiona was too quick:
‘Have you had any more thoughts about what you’ll do, afterwards?’
It was almost endearing how nonchalantly she said “afterwards”. As if the careers we’d spent every waking hour working towards were just a party, and we needed somewhere else to go.
‘What do you mean “more”?’ I said, trying to keep my voice light. ‘I haven’t had any thoughts about it. You know I’m not made for anything else.’
‘Didn’t your dad want to get you started on an investment portfolio? Buy a property to lease out? That would be a nice way to earn some money while you work out what you want to do next.’
I couldn’t think of anything I’d like less.
I’d inherited some of my dad’s skill at quick maths, but not his obsession with income streams. Having eggs in different baskets was the wise thing to do, but all of mine had been in the BCBC since I won the Premio Taglioni at seventeen, and it had worked in my favour thus far.
‘I think I’m afraid that if I start exploring second careers too soon, all the success I’m enjoying now will run out.’
‘Like a jinx?’ Fiona hovered a closed fist over my coffee table. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll knock on wood so the fairies don’t hear you.’
‘Fee. Do we have to keep talking about this? Thinking about the day I stop dancing makes me sad beyond words.’
‘It makes me sad, too. I want little ballet school Fiona to dance Odette/Odile at least once before my final curtain call. I also want to know that when I leave the stage, I’ve built a nice bridge for myself. A smooth crossing.’
I tapped my darning needle against the vamp of one of my shoes.
‘I want a smooth crossing, too. But I’ll build it when the time comes.
I don’t exactly have a vast estate to maintain,’ I said, pointing from one end of my flat to the other.
‘On a principal’s salary, I’m able to squirrel away even more than I already was. ’
I instantly regretted saying it. Fiona looked at the pointe shoes on the table, then started turning the beads on her bracelet.
‘I’ve got time,’ I added, bending a shank to make it pliable. ‘We both do.’