Chapter 1 The Dream
THE DREAM
God, you were made for Mendelssohn. It’s remarkable to watch.’
Nick was having the most fun of any of us in the Markova studio.
Despite having retired as a BCBC principal long ago, and having a to-do list that could reach the moon, he loved to get back in the studio at least once a season, especially for a ballet like Ashton’s The Dream, with its dauntingly intricate choreography.
While I massaged my coal-hot feet, Sander spun pirouettes from one side of the studio to the other at such speed that the pages of Nick’s notebook fluttered in his lap.
He was right – Mendelssohn’s quicksilver allegro suited Sander perfectly.
And yet, something was different during this rehearsal.
By night, our Bayadère performances were full of adoration and exuberance; by day, working on The Dream, Sander hardly smiled at all.
He took Nick’s direction with humility and professionalism, but rather than going into the steps with verve, he seemed grimly determined to get through them in one piece, his jaw set, eyes somewhere far away.
‘Looks like he’s finally found a challenge,’ Charlie observed quietly. ‘If Sander’s going to be exhausted by anything, it’s Oberon.’
It was a fair point. When Ashton created The Dream, which distils the most enchanting elements of A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a one-act ballet, it was as if he’d been trying to push his male dancers so far beyond the limits of their mortal bodies that they’d metamorphose into something superhuman.
Puck’s leaps and pirouettes are positively manic – when Charlie and I crossed paths after our respective rehearsals one afternoon, he asked if I’d be so kind as to drag him to the showers by his ankles.
Leo Kandemir, the soloist playing Bottom, had a taste of ballerina pain when he donned pointe shoes to represent clip-clopping hooves after being transformed into a donkey.
As for the king of the fairies, Oberon’s choreography is so eclectic, so relentless, that to this day the role is rightly considered one of the most difficult ever devised for male dancers.
Not that Ashton let his queen of the fairies off lightly either.
Between La Bayadère and The Dream, I put in an embarrassing number of new orders with the pointe shoe specialist. As Titania, I had to articulate tiny, shivering steps without compromising my port de bras.
I knew that for her to come alive in the spellbinding forest, I had to breathe through all my muscles and use them as if rowing out to sea.
By the time I got home, I could barely find the energy to heat up a tin of baked beans.
At least Nick seemed delighted by our work.
As we refined Oberon and Titania’s reconciliatory pas de deux, he ran alongside us, covering the breadth of the studio floor like a swimming coach following his athletes up and down pool lanes, intervening only to adjust a hand position or extend the time for which we remained in a hold.
‘Yes, that’s it, caress her arms – don’t be afraid to savour the moment. You’re still a king, but you’re a king whose love is rekindled, you’ve remembered why you fell in love with her in the first place. You can’t possibly imagine ruling without her by your side!’
As usual, we rehearsed the story out of order, getting the most important section down before turning to earlier events.
The ballet begins with Titania and Oberon falling out over a changeling boy, but the child artist wouldn’t join us until closer to the start of the run, so in the meantime we rehearsed by pulling at a cushion.
‘Let me ask you both: why do they clash? They each want the boy to be part of their inner circle, but why do they each think they’re right while the other is wrong?’
Nick encouraged us to make eye contact. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the Sander I’d come to know had been put behind glass, leaving a stranger before me.
‘Well, Titania is very nurturing and gentle,’ I said. ‘She wants to raise this human child as if he were one of her own. Whereas Oberon… well, we don’t know exactly why he’s so possessive. Perhaps he doesn’t want the boy to grow up too feminine—’
‘He wants the child as a servant,’ Sander said flatly. ‘Not a son.’
‘Oh, interesting, I like that,’ Nick said, eyes bright. ‘Go on.’
‘If Titania raises the boy to forget his mortal side entirely, he cannot be used as go-between. One who can cross back and forth between Faerie and the rest – the world of humans.’
‘A go-between? Why would they need one of those?’ I asked.
‘To bring news. Supplies. And to find more changelings.’ He glanced off, casting his disdain at the wall. ‘He wants the boy to know his place. That he may never challenge the throne, even when he grows to a man, or get wrong ideas about leaving.’
‘Great stuff!’ Nick said, pondering this narrative thread back to his chair, which he rarely used – he always became too caught up in the action on the floor. ‘I do love it when dancers take the time to give their roles proper thought. Now, with all of that in mind, let’s go again.’
* * *
‘Sander, are you… all right?’
I put my hand lightly against his chest to stop him leaving the Markova studio in a hurry. He nodded too readily, his shrug almost defensive: Why are you asking?
‘You haven’t seemed like yourself this week.’
‘Meaning what?’ The acid in his voice was subtle, but enough to make me step back. ‘How do you know what I am like between one week and the next?’
I blinked, then remembered I had to shift gears and find the strength to be Nikiya again tomorrow night. Whatever this was, I didn’t have the energy to spare for it.
‘Well, if you’re going to be like that… I was only asking.’ I folded my towel over my arm and made for the door. ‘See you in the wings tomorrow.’
A sigh, and then a touch on my shoulder. ‘No, Trix, wait. I… Can we get out from here, please?’
He looked so defeated that I found enough sympathy to walk with him down the corridor towards the company showers.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I did not mean to…’ He searched for the word, pinching his fingers together like a beak.
‘Snap?’
‘Yes, snap.’
‘What’s going on? Usually in rehearsals you’re so full of life that you can get me through anything. Now it feels as if I’m having to do all the heavy lifting. Metaphorically speaking.’
At last, a half-smile. As we walked, he took my hand and slowly swung it back and forth. That was new. I exhaled slowly in a feeble attempt to slow my pulse.
‘This role is hard for me,’ he finally admitted. ‘Not choreography. I love the Ashton steps. But between me and the steps is…’ He made a wall of his other hand. ‘Character.’
‘But you had such good answers to all of Nick’s questions.’
Sander shook his head, then sighed, apparently debating with himself whether he was going to say what he said next: ‘The role is too much like my father.’
‘Oh.’
‘Cold. Controlling. Vol… vol…’ He made a fist in frustration.
‘Volatile?’
He snapped his fingers into a point: Yes.
‘Oh,’ I repeated, at a loss. This was one of the most personal things Sander had ever told me, and yet it still felt like hardly anything. A shadow of something I wasn’t sure I wanted to see in full. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why? Nothing to do with you.’
‘Well… I suppose that’s just it. I don’t know anything about your family, or what’s happened between you, but I wish there was something I could do to help. To find a way over, under, or through that wall, so that you can get to the joy.’
‘You already help.’ We stopped outside the door to the men’s showers. My hand was still in his; he considered it a moment, then planted a light kiss on it. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
Worry wasn’t the word I would have used. With our first full season together almost over, but a whole summer of international engagements still to come, Sander felt more and more like a coin I couldn’t stop turning in my hand, unable to settle on a side.
* * *
Even when we came to our first performance of The Dream, I couldn’t have told you whether Sander had found a way through that wall. He made an effort to be less withdrawn in rehearsals, but as soon as he had to be in character, he became serious and intense.
Being onstage among the dark, mossy trees of the fairy forest elevated the whole experience, heightening my excitement to dance around it, to fall asleep in the cosy canopy of an English oak and flutter about with Fiona, Isabel, Yelena, and Saffia, my fairies-in-waiting.
With my long, gauzy green skirt, a pearly pink bodice adorned with petals, and flower crown, it was easy to get swept up in the magic.
The only thing that took me out of it, and made me feel every inch a fragile human, was seeing Sander in full costume and make-up for the first time.
His sleeves were embroidered with ivy, his tights a deep green, his thin cape trailing regally as he approached the wings.
His crown was thorny, giving him extra height, and his eyes had been transformed with long, swooping lines of black and green, accentuated with corners of white.
He caught me staring, but I couldn’t look away. I was mesmerised.
The whole time we shared the stage, I felt the electric thrill not just of dancing with him, but of being at his mercy.
The way his make-up doubled the intensity of his stare, the power of his grip as we joined hands and dipped into arabesque penchés at the same time, as we turned and arced without breaking connection.
I felt as if we really were in the dark, ghostly glade of a fairy tale, away from the familiar.
On the cusp of danger. By the end of our final pas de deux, I could have conjured sparks at my fingertips.
Only when the curtain came down, and his shoulders relaxed as he put his arms around me in relief did I think, with relief of my own: Ah, there you are.