September 1988 – March 1989 The Same
THE SAME
A man who wasn’t interested in sex, whose life could feel complete without it, had always seemed so unlikely that when Sander told me on the rooftop, I assumed I’d misunderstood him, or that he’d misunderstood me.
Then Fiona’s words hit me with the force of a snowball: “We’re surrounded by mirrors all day and yet you can’t see what’s right in front of you.”
‘When first we danced together,’ Sander continued, ‘I thought we were complete opposite of each other. But we are…’
‘The same?’ None of this felt real. To be isolated on one’s own patch for so long and then, suddenly: a new arrival. A companion.
Sander glanced off, still clasping my hand, patting it in thought. ‘We are… more alike than first I believed. Taught to believe. So much more.’ He seemed to remember my hand didn’t belong to him and lowered it. ‘You give me much to think about.’
That was how we left it – a two-sided revelation, a coin cast high in the air, catching light over and over.
* * *
While contending with our marathon run of Mayerling and the inevitable cast changes due to injuries, we also had Ashton’s The Two Pigeons (featuring two bona fide pigeons, who behaved angelically only around Sander) and mimed ice skating for the shorter, wintery one-act Les Patineurs, and then it was on to Nutcracker month.
I was grateful for the busy schedule, and those pieces specifically.
They were the palate-cleansers Sander and I badly needed after Mayerling – by the end of the run, I’d used up all my lip balms and felt desensitised to touch.
We were cast in separate roles for Les Patineurs, and when we reunited in the glittery Kingdom of Sweets for The Nutcracker, it was in roles we already knew. Winter gave us time to recalibrate, to remember the dividing lines between pleasure and work, desire and obligation, passion and automation.
By the time winter thawed, the BCBC programme was pivoting towards a welcome love story in La Fille mal gardée.
Life within the company began to change in kind: Charlie proposed to Isabel in the Conservatory on the day the clocks went forward and the sky began to lighten; Jamie discreetly but happily moved all his possessions into Lorenzo’s flat near Borough Market; Stephen draped his arm around Akihiko after morning classes were over and kissed her, long and indulgently, on the neck, which made her smile.
I had no idea when they’d started seeing each other.
Akihiko was a grown woman, and we weren’t close enough to call each other friends, but a little spark of fear lit up in me when I saw them together like that.
What could I say to her? I had no evidence that Stephen was the same person he’d been six years ago.
But I didn’t know if he’d changed, either.
‘They look happy,’ Fiona said. I could tell just from her voice that she was casting a wary glance at me.
‘I hope he’s good to her,’ was all I could say.
* * *
We also welcomed a new male principal into the fold: a transfer from ABT who Sander and I had befriended during our guest run of Giselle in New York.
His name was George, he had a smile so white it could cause traffic accidents, and Fiona was smitten the moment Nick introduced him during an all-company Equity meeting.
‘Ohhh, Trix, help me,’ she said, her weak knees clearly only half-feigned. ‘Please tell me there’s something deeply wrong with him, something that will turn me off him immediately. I don’t think I’ll be able to concentrate if he insists on being that perfect.’
I couldn’t tell her any such thing. George had appointed himself our unofficial, unpaid tour guide around New York, taking me and Sander to the best local spots to eat, telling us which neighbourhoods were safe and which to steer clear of, which art galleries had the best air conditioning, and where to find little pockets of green space amid the overwhelming concrete blocks.
‘Why not find out for yourself?’ I couldn’t resist using my principal privilege for good, half-dragging her across the room and introducing her to George.
‘This is Fiona, the best soloist in the company. She’d love to show you around the National Portrait Gallery sometime.’
His eyes immediately flicked up and down before resting on her face, which suddenly looked brighter than it had all season.
‘You’re welcome,’ I whispered to her with a parting pat on the shoulder, leaving them to it and gravitating back to Sander, who nodded, suitably impressed.
* * *
La Fille mal gardée, Ashton’s comic two-act ballet which premiered at the Dance Hall in 1960, was the cherry blossom in our ballet garden of wonders, its score a patchwork of different composers like the squares of an old, much-loved quilt.
‘This was the last ballet I did while I was still a student,’ I told Sander on the day of our learning call, alongside Akihiko, Stephen, Violeta, and George, all of us debuting as Lise and Colas.
‘You danced Lise before you graduated?’ Sander said with only mild surprise, which flattered me.
‘No, silly, as a chicken.’
Set on a farm, the ballet opens with a jaunty dance of chickens in puffy suits and spindly legs.
It had briefly made me question all my vocational choices up to that point, but Fiona and Jamie had been by my side.
Once we graduated into the company, we quickly realised that even the most sophisticated dancers – the Grace Langhams and Carolyn Sabouris – had once been chickens themselves.
‘It’s a rite of passage – will you stop laughing! ’
‘Sorry, sorry’ – Sander leaned on me for support – ‘I just can’t see it.’
When I proceeded to demonstrate, plucking up my knees and flapping my arms in triangles, he fell about laughing until tears sprang from his eyes, which made me smile late into the night.
Fille had plenty to keep us occupied and out of breath, with Ashton’s classic, near-impossible demand for steps that were fast yet precise, like a shower of arrows across a battlefield.
I spent every free evening that April standing on one leg in a balance with a tube of kitchen towel high above my head, until I was sure I’d be able to hold a fistful of ribbons for Lise’s friends to dance with, rotating me in the centre like a weathervane, without any wobbles.
I spent hours with Mariska polishing Lise’s mime soliloquy – “It must be big enough for the fans all the way in the gods!” – where she daydreams about marrying Colas and raising not one, not two, but three children with him.
‘Is that what you want, too?’ Sander asked, after practising his leap out of the hay bales that Colas uses as a Trojan horse to sneak into the farmhouse. ‘Children?’
‘God, no.’ I reflexively glanced at Ben, Lori, and our guest conductor José, but they were on the other side of the studio, comparing score annotations and choreographic notation.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound quite so…
It’s not the sort of thing people like to hear, and I’m glad they don’t pester me as often as they might.
My parents ask every now and again, on the off chance that I’ve changed my mind about giving them grandchildren, but frankly they’ll be waiting in perpetuity. ’
‘So… no children,’ he said. ‘What about marriage?’
Marriage. We hadn’t spoken about it since the night of the Great Storm.
I’d grown up fantasising about my dream wedding as often as the next girl, but rarely got past the crossing of the threshold into the honeymoon suite somewhere tropical.
It was always remembering the “do you submit to your husband” question in the vows that made the fantasy dissolve.
‘Only to the right person, and… well, you and I know it would have to be a very particular type of person.’ I challenged myself not to glance off. Sander’s face gave nothing away, except the faintest beginnings of a smile that I couldn’t help but mirror. ‘Yourself?’
He was quiet for so long, I thought he wasn’t going to give me an answer. But then he enclosed my hand in both of his and brought it to his chest, just as he’d done on the rooftop. The look he gave me melted something in my core like coffee over a sugar cube: The same.