La Bayadère
Nikiya, the ill-fated bayadère, performs her first dance around the sacred fire with strong, expansive arm gestures that come from the spine, like Odette’s wings in Swan Lake.
Dance is her magic and her life force – she wields it in her services to the temple so reverently that the High Brahmin, who has fallen for her, gives her the prestigious gig of dancing at an upcoming betrothal ceremony for the Rajah’s daughter, Gamzatti.
She accepts the offer, but not his affections.
Dismayed, he leaves, taking the other bayadères and fakirs with him.
A few minutes later, Nikiya returns for a second solo.
It was the anticipation of this entrance, rather than my first, that had been making me shiver under the blanket. I’d been a principal for over a year, but was still getting used to having the stage entirely to myself: my three dimensions and the dark, illuminated only by footlights.
What I’d told Nick at the start of the season was true – I wanted Nikiya because she would challenge me. Her choreography in all three acts requires unwavering control and sharp, quick turns without warning; her character demands celestial, seductive glamour.
During our most recent Nutcracker run, the critic for The Thames Horizon had praised my Clara for her “virginal innocence”, which made my skin prickle.
There were no promotions to be had beyond principal dancer, but in order to be one of the true greats, I had to be a Swiss Army knife: versatile enough to be deployed in any role, no matter how pure or wicked, worldly or otherworldly. I wanted to do everything.
And so, Nikiya. The costumiers had put me in a long, silvery-lilac skirt, a cropped vest, delicate arm cuffs, and a glittering diadem. I felt like a Swarovski crystal come to life.
It was easy to forget about the audience, since we didn’t have one yet.
Nikiya danced for her own sake, with no self-consciousness.
I balanced and lengthened luxuriously, revelling in the freedom of the stage and the body I had honed for years.
My poses were the words of a spell cast out to the wings, to Nikiya’s lover Solor: Stop whatever you’re doing and look at what you’re missing. Look at me. Drink me in.
According to the rest of the world, desire and sexual attraction were synonymous; I understood both, but only experienced one.
Anyone who didn’t know me well would have assumed I got “turned on” like any other woman, and that I either sought out a partner to share that journey to its ultimate, ecstatic destination, or got myself there.
Anyone who’d known me long enough assumed that, for whatever mysterious reason, I didn’t get turned on at all.
The truth, which I’d never told anyone and could barely admit to myself, was somewhere in the middle.
I had been turned on before: by the dreamy principals whose posters I’d put on my dormitory wall; by my first dance partners in upper school; by the boys I’d allowed to kiss me at end-of-term parties. By Stephen.
Thinking about Sander turned me on, without question.
Not just when he was onstage, but when he did utterly unremarkable things like sweeping his hands through his hair, smiling at dogs on the street, or absent-mindedly holding the back of his neck while we took corrections in the studio.
I often imagined a powerful magnetic force pulling my body to his – but the fantasy always ended there.
Even alone in the darkness of my bedroom, nothing compelled me to move my hands below the duvet.
If I forced myself to picture him naked, or myself, or both of us, my desire went cold like a snuffed candle.
In twenty-seven years and counting, I had yet to hear another person admit to having desires as limited as mine; I’d learned early on to keep them to myself.
Throughout adolescence, while everyone else was fretting about how soon they would have sex, whether they were doing it correctly, the logistics and politics and side effects of contraception, I became increasingly convinced I had a brain tumour, or some obscure hormone disorder.
I even asked the school doctor for blood tests when I was sixteen, old enough that it wouldn’t be disclosed to my parents.
When the results came back with normal ranges of everything, I was relieved, mystified, and oddly disappointed.
Later, after how it ended with Stephen, I considered seeing a counsellor, to open up my soul and let them root around for the cause of my non-existent sex drive.
But then I got promoted to first soloist and became busier than ever and realised, with startling clarity, that I didn’t actually want my problem to be solved.
Because, ultimately, the end result of “curing” a lack of sexual attraction would be…
having sex, the thing I did not want and found impossible to imagine ever wanting.
I didn’t want to wake up one day with a sex drive; all I wanted was to know that I wasn’t defective. That I was as human as anyone else.
All of which is to say that when I danced Nikiya during the stage call, I didn’t feel like a sex object; I felt like someone worthy of desire as I defined it. My stage, my spotlight, my rules.
As I turned away, Sander entered stage right and clapped twice.
Early on in rehearsals, we’d worked out a backstory for the lovers: as a warrior, Solor had attended plenty of sacred ceremonies out of obligation and always found them dull, until he saw Nikiya for the first time and decided, in Sander’s words, ‘I must know, who is she?’
They’ve been meeting in the forest outside the temple for weeks, and can’t get enough of each other. The hand-clap is their inside joke, the dance equivalent of Hey, beautiful, get over here now so I can worship you.
In every pas de deux, you give your body to your partner and trust him to keep it safe, while your partner has to let you run at him and trust that your muscles will tense enough that the impact of your body dissolves into lightness.
Nikiya and Solor’s Act I pas is a proper sprint, with the only chances to catch breath in the close, intimate holds of the slower moments, when they look into each other’s eyes and nothing else matters.
He draws himself up in fifth position, hands to his heart, promising himself to her, before kneeling in a deep lunge as if to a queen.
She mirrors his hands, steps in long, wide tendu around him until their faces make a tilted axis, stopping tantalisingly short of a kiss.
For one of the most memorable lifts in the ballet, I let Sander tip me back while my legs were pointed and crossed at the knee, the ground leaving me as he swayed, holding me supine.
I might as well have been floating in the ocean, smiling up at clear skies.
Then, in a single breath and with his typical ease, he swung me all the way up until my back leg was extended and our foreheads touched.
He set me down slowly so that I could arabesque while leaning into it, the way you can lean into the wind on a hilltop.
Roksana’s voice echoed around my head: ‘Stay, stay, stay! Stand tall, keep back of knee strong!’
We used all of the stage, circling the sacred fire before returning downstage so I could pirouette in his grasp, arms snaked above my head.
Just before the stage call had begun, when I was changing into my first costume, I’d tried not to think too much about how different Sander’s touch would feel from our studio rehearsals, when there had always been at least one layer of clothing between us.
Based on our previous ballets together, I assured myself that the adrenaline would stop me from noticing any differences.
It didn’t.
His hands were warm on my bare skin, a comforting, steady presence as if they were speaking for him: It’s all right, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got you.
When I wasn’t pirouetting, he was lifting and rocking me, or wrapping his arm around my waist as I dipped into another arabesque, his fingers finding purchase between my ribs.
I danced around the fire once more, to give myself enough runway before I took off into his arms: I felt high enough to reach for the domed ceiling’s chandelier.
He turned in a circle, one hand supporting my knee and the other against the tensed muscles of my stomach. I could have stayed up there for hours.
The pas de deux ends as sensually as a ballet devised in the 1870s can get away with: for a final time, Nikiya leans into Solor’s strong arms and dips into a low back bend.
As they both close their eyes, he rests his head on her chest; she arches in pleasure.
The pas de deux ends, and the pas d’action resumes.
* * *
We still included intervals in stage calls, to allow for set, costume, and pointe shoe changes, and to touch up our industrial-grade face powder. I was halfway to the dressing room when Sander caught me by the elbow, looking faintly horrified.
‘Trix.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I hurt you?’
I didn’t know what had given him that idea until I followed his stare to my torso, which was bright red on both sides with palm prints.
‘Oh! Sander, it’s all right, they’re only friction burns. It happens all the time.’
‘Oh. Really? Because if I turn you too fast, or my fingers dig in—’
‘You don’t.’ I took one of his hands and patted it for emphasis. ‘You’re perfect.’
What I’d meant to say was, “You’re doing everything perfectly.”
The silence that followed might have been longer if not for the click of Armand’s camera from halfway down the corridor.
He loved capturing moments backstage even more than during performances, and only made his presence known to his oblivious subjects after getting whatever he’d thought was worth a square of film.
He took three photographs in black and white, so the handprints on my skin aren’t visible – the only thing the first photo shows is me holding Sander’s hand and leaning towards him with my back foot in tendu, which I wasn’t even conscious of doing.
The second photo shows his face relaxed with relief, his other hand in his hair.
The last photo is after we’ve heard the click from Armand’s camera and turned towards the lens, both of us grinning.