Rewritten
My breath dropped to the bottom of my lungs and stayed there.
‘Sander.’ I stared at them. ‘Aleksander Sylvan. My partner? Our star principal? Please don’t make jokes, Jackie, I’m not remotely in the mood.’
‘Trix, I…’ Jackie put down her mug. Nick frowned.
It wasn’t a joke. They were genuinely confused.
She approached me with one arm hovering over my shoulder. ‘Whatever’s the matter? I’m awfully sorry, but I don’t know anyone by that name. Nick…?’
‘Trix, your partner last night was Max. I think I’d remember if we had an extra principal kicking about… Trix? Are you all right? Do you need to sit – Trix!’
I almost fell out of the office, barely able to hear my own footsteps for the blood rushing in my ears. I half-walked, half-ran back down to the stage door, almost scaring Frank out of his shoes.
‘You saw him, the day before last. Sander. He was here, with two men, he spoke to you, didn’t he? Didn’t he?’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Errington, really I am, but I don’t know who you’re talking—’
I raced back up the stairs, pounding my palm against the brick wall on the way up, trying to jolt myself free of this nightmare. Out of some wild, misplaced hope, I ran to the studio where the men took their morning class, looking for Sander on the other side of the door.
‘Trix?’ Stephen rose out of his back bend. He and Ray were the only ones in that early, warming up at their own pace before class was due to start. ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘When was the last time you saw Sander?’ I waited for recognition to cross his face, for him to smooth over my worries the way he used to with ease. ‘Stephen. Don’t do this to me.’
‘Do what? What are you talking about?’
‘Trix, are you okay?’ Ray left the barre and approached me. ‘You look… real pale.’
‘Does the name Aleksander Sylvan mean anything to you? Anything at all?’
‘Should it?’
‘This isn’t funny.’ My voice was cracking; I was cracking. ‘You need to stop it right now, because it’s not… It’s not…’
‘Trix?’ Charlie appeared behind me. He was so bright-eyed, so confused about why anything would be wrong that I didn’t even need to ask.
I stumbled past him and kept going down the corridor, towards the women’s class, without even knowing why.
Maybe I wanted Fiona, Isabel, Mariska. Someone to sob into.
The performance grid on the wall had been patched up after the previous day’s sabotage, with fresh cast lists printed for Romeo and Juliet and the rehearsal schedules intact. I ran my fingers up and down the pages, searching for Sander’s name, finding only Max’s.
Someone’s fingertips on my shoulder – Charlie was saying my name at different speeds and pitches until I looked at him.
I didn’t faint, exactly, but I had to sit down against the wall. I was cold. My blood was still rushing, but I was so, so cold.
* * *
I did not, as many people advised, skip class or take a long lunch break.
I pretended that my outburst had been due to insomnia and low blood sugar, and that yes, I was feeling much better now, and yes, of course I knew Max had been my partner since the beginning of the rehearsal process.
Instinct told me not to run, but to camouflage.
To put on a masterful performance of being fine, until I could work out what the bloody hell was going on.
I resisted the urge to shove Sander’s note in Charlie’s and Jamie’s faces, unable to take another perplexed reaction.
But its importance grew as the day dragged on.
His photograph was missing from the wall of polaroids and candids in the costumiers’ department.
The poster for Romeo and Juliet was a photograph of us from the balcony pas de deux, that iconic moon lift where Sander lifted me from his elbows, but it was silhouetted – his outline could have been Max’s, or Stephen’s, or Ray’s.
It was as if reality had been rewritten while the world slept.
The only evidence that Sander had ever walked these corridors, had ever leapt across the sprung floors, was folded in the palm of my hand.
As soon as my rehearsals with Stephen for the Diamonds section of Balanchine’s Jewels were over, I went out and bought a copy of every newspaper with an arts section.
DANSEUSE
Romeo and Juliet: Violent delights and bittersweet sorrow
Reviews | Ballet
Erin Desborough
Opening night review:
Tuesday, 15 May 1990
Shakespeare’s perennial tragedy, reimagined by Kenneth MacMillan in 1965 for the Vic-Wells Ballet Company, stages a conflict in every performance – of swords, yes, but also of themes and moods.
Is it ultimately a story of love, or loss?
On the opening night of the British Classical Ballet Company’s sixth outing with Romeo and Juliet, loss had the upper hand: like many fellow reviewers and audience members, I was shocked and disheartened to learn that Aleksander Sylvan was indisposed and would not be debuting Romeo as originally scheduled.
First soloist Max Breton had a dauntingly high bar to reach as his understudy and, given the circumstances, did admirably well…
The Thames Horizon
The BCBC’s Romeo and Juliet: Review
Arts Section – Dance
Bill Gordon
Tuesday, 15 May 1990
… Breton brought boyish charm and affability to Romeo in Acts I and II, led the piazza skirmishes with gusto, and by Tybalt’s death had won the audience over with well-evoked devastation.
It would be disingenuous to say that he matched Sylvan for technique, but then, how could any danseur hope to do that?
Breton’s jumps and extensions were capable, with few errors, but he needs another performance or two to settle into the role.
Fortunately for him and the audience, his performance was shored up masterfully by the other crown jewel of the BCBC, Patricia Errington.
For the first ninety minutes she bourréed and piquéd around the stage with the lightness and innocence of a sixteen-year-old, belying her years of technical experience.
She threw herself into the magnificent balcony pas de deux, arm drifting up and down in MacMillan’s innovative lifts like a schoolgirl on a swimming pool lilo, all carefree bliss.
Juliet’s transformation in Act III was all the more powerful for the contrast, with Errington seated on the edge of her bed, staring down the audience while Prokofiev’s score built across four long bars like a fire unattended.
The Greater London Gazette
ROMEO AND JULIET: HEARTbrEAK NEVER LOOKED SO HAUNTING
Culture, Stage Reviews, Ballet
Terry Whist
Tuesday, 15 May 1990
… The greatest Juliets are those who bring the audience on an emotional journey, from girl to woman, from na?veté to steely resolve.
The final ten minutes of the ballet, when Romeo takes the fatal swig of poison and Juliet awakens seconds too late to stop him, are always moving.
Tonight, as the last dancer standing in that shadowy tomb, Errington gave what might be the performance of her career.
When the string section soared to its anguished apex, she crumbled, her face tear-streaked and her scream so full-bodied that I could almost swear to having heard raw sound breach the wall of music.
Audiences have watched Errington unspool into madness as Giselle, despair as Odette, and languish as Manon, but this was something else entirely.
For the first time in her four seasons as a principal, she has debuted in a leading full-length role without Sylvan by her side; one cannot help but wonder if it was not Juliet’s heart that broke onstage, but Errington’s.
Either way, tonight’s performance was unforgettable.
Romeo and Juliet is in rep at the Covent Garden Dance Hall until 23 June, with varying casts.