Emerging Grace (Creative Non-fiction)

Originally produced for a university-level creative writing course. Assignment topic: Passion.

Emerging Grace

Ballet dancers have always struck me as being much like hummingbirds – voraciously passionate, unique, and glittery. The music-box figurine you often encounter as a child does not even begin to convey the breathtaking satisfaction of being fastened into a bona-fide classical ballet tutu. I once had a fitting for a costume which was to be worn for the ballet Theme and Variations, and it is likely the most lavish garment I have ever donned. Sky-blue in color, gold lace and glittering turquoise jewels, with a skirt so stiff, full and perfect, it was sheer delight. As the dresser pulled a row of tiny hooks together on the back of my bodice, much like doing up a corset, I lightly ran my hands over the sparkling layers of stiff, frilly tulle that stuck out straight from my hipbones. The costume itself represented a culmination of years and years of intensive training, personal sacrifice, and achieving a dream. Growing up in ballet school, it was my teacher’s belief that a student had to earn her tutu through discipline and dedication. I had been one of the lucky few to land an apprenticeship position with a ballet company at the age of seventeen.

This was what I’d wanted ever since I began dancing at the age of three, whether I was aware of it or not. The instinct was always there: a fascination with movement as a means of expression, creation, illustrating music, costume, make-up, and imagination. For years I had studied the professionals up on stage, a league of superior beings who were capable of working absolute magic. I could not believe that I had become skilled enough to work alongside them. It was a little eerie, finally getting a taste of the professional ballet dancer’s life – something I had so long worked for was now spilling over me, uncontrollably, like a broken dam. Paradoxically, it was everything I expected it to be, yet nothing like what I had anticipated.

As an apprentice, it was both exciting and daunting to be right at the very bottom of the company hierarchy, precariously perched, and knowing that it would be an excruciating struggle to move up in the ranks, even by a smidge. I was determined to work as hard as I could to make it happen. Chance came most unexpectedly. One day I was quietly observing rehearsal from the back of the practice studio, when the next thing I knew, a senior ballerina, succumbing to wretched injury, removed her tutu and pushed the fluffy tulle into my arms. Amidst the flurry, I managed to focus on the choreographer’s face and mouth:

“Do you have a rough idea of Heather’s part?”

I nodded, not by thought but by reflex. I did know Heather’s part. As the understudy, I often knew everybody’s part. This was my big chance. I stood, little old me, amongst these great, wonderful professionals. I snuck a peek at myself in the mirror, trying to digest the reflection, trying to decide if I looked as though I could fit in. All I was able to comprehend from my glance was the way the vivid red of the practice tutu clashed outrageously against the seafoam green of my leotard, and how my legs really did look like mosquito legs. The ballet began, and I soon found that there is an enormous difference between watching something from the outside, and then actually doing it. I can only liken it to the difference between observing a blizzard outside the window of your heated home, and then actually being out there in it, battling the crazed particles of ice and snow. I performed the prescribed sequence of movement in all correctness, but immediately found fault in what I considered to be my weakness in artistic strength and interpretation. I was inexperienced, trying to forge my own unique identity into a role previously occupied by a dancer I absolutely revere. After watching Heather inject the role with her ominous, striking energy, I felt I made a ridiculous parody of it, too dazed and insecure to make it my own.

Of course, there were moments of glorious love: one of those practices where movement felt fluid and technically sound, and I managed to achieve the most precise control over the tips of my satin slippers as they skimmed across the floor. Especially fortunate were the days when this was the case, and my Director decided to observe class. I attacked each step with every fiber of my being, and worked so hard to pour my soul into every movement that I felt like I was taking my heart out of my chest, turning it inside out, and placing it at his feet. My Director, to me, embodied all the roles of sage, mentor, and Father-figure. Undisputedly one of the most fascinating people I have ever met, he was ever the enigma, seeming to hold the keys of destiny for all of his young protégées. The object was to capture his attention, or, as I thought of it, your ‘moment in the sun.’

Company politics could be lavishly awarding or mercilessly destructive. Negative twists always seemed to be delivered in the most torturous way possible. I had just finished ballet class one day when another one of the apprentices bounced up to me, eyes aglow.

“I have to tell you something!”

“What?”

“I have to tell you about my phone call!”

“Phone call?” I furrowed my brow.

“I got a call… from our Director.”

I felt confused. What was she talking about?

“He just made me a company member!”

WHAT? The news felt like razor blades being jammed into my skull. On she bubbled and rambled, recounting every gory detail of her news, and I desperately struggled for self-control. I knew that I should remain calm, but I am only human. It hurts, when someone you’re good-naturedly competitive with gets exactly what you dream of having. I went home, and wept as I cooked dinner, wept as I ate it, then phoned my parents and wept some more. Indeed, ballet dance was a torrid love affair.

Theatre: Hot dressing room bulbs, make-up in its flat containers, strewn about the sinks. Piles of new and exhausted ballet slippers, in corners, on shelves. Costume racks overstuffed with sequined tulle, glittery brocades, and shiny lycra. Backstage: dark, cramped. Resin ground into the floor and carpets surrounding its box. Garbage bins full of used Kleenex and paper cups. The stage loomed, and although I loved it, it often intimidated me. It was that fine line between opening up my soul to the velvety blackness and grandeur of the auditorium audience, or feeling swallowed by the unaccustomed space, and disoriented by the lighting, which could inflict a momentary flash of blindness at just the right angles. Here I drew the lines for the battle which was vying for that sublime communication with the audience, one of excitement, longing, beauty, eccentricity, and vitality. The war paint of stage make-up complete, I would add a shining tiara – perhaps one evening serving as a fairy attendant to Titania in a scuffle over the changeling child, or another evening as little Clara, saluting soldiers in the nightmare scene of The Nutcracker Suite. But more often than not, I would deliver one of those performances which, directly afterwards, I wanted nothing more than to run and lock myself in a washroom cubicle. This was the discrepancy between the perfection expected versus the inevitable flaws of humanity in divine art: wobbly ankles, falling off balance, not being in time or in line with the other dancers… During intermission, I recall my fingers quaking in anticipation of the Ballet Mistress’ reaction as I removed my snowflake crown and pinned in a flower headdress. At the very least I was usually cornered in the darkness of the backstage wings before the opening of the second act, where she could not see the tears threatening to overflow my false eyelashes.

“Kristine, I need you to pay much closer attention to the spacing of the waltz… you were off almost everywhere. And watch your arms… they were all over the place.”

It didn’t help that my freshly-promoted colleague was standing just beyond me, witnessing every one of my shortcomings as they were listed.

I will never forget the sound of my Director’s voice: a Finnish accent which was lively, seductive, and articulate. I made an effort to schedule frequent performance evaluations with him, eager to learn all I could from him. Give me an answer! Give me inspiration! Whenever I could feel the dancer in me struggling, his enthusiasm and wisdom became my raison d’etre. At times I would go to him, not even sure of the answers I sought. It was difficult to express that, for the longest time, I was hiding horrible truths – I could not eat properly, and was certain that I was unhappy and could no longer go on. I questioned him about the very essence of the dancer’s struggle itself. He looked very grave as he came out from behind his desk, and seated himself on the sofa opposite me.

“I know that you are worried about the promotions, but I am sorry to tell you that as a ballet dancer, you will always be worrying. Now it is promotions, or who gets to go on tour with the company. Soon it will be who is getting what roles, and which dancers are your competition. When you are a senior dancer, you will be worried about the new, younger dancers coming into the company, and if you will be able to handle the injuries which begin to deteriorate the body. Then one day you must retire. It is not easy, being a dancer. But what you have accomplished already is so much. I know that no matter what you decide, you will be successful.”

A deep depression set in, and the dancer in me was laid to rest. The relief was overwhelming. Had I remained in ballet, I am sure that I would only have become more sarcastic, neurotic, and felt as though my soul was being whittled away. I doubt that my true spirit would have survived. I was taught to uphold standards – the value of combining extraordinary technique with passionate artistry. It was always bend further, reach longer, turn faster, jump higher… you could never be good enough. But you could be beautiful, for beauty was overcoming obstacles and striving to be better, each moment. I didn’t need to stay in ballet to do this.

What do I desire now? Not professional ballet, not dieting, not deference. I can be an educated woman, unaffected by the perversity of ballet politics. I did not really give up my dream, I merely stepped out of a vessel I once considered my life and into another, where I traverse University campus with my hair loose, rather than slicked into a braided topknot. For a small length of time, I lived with the expectations of my dreams and knowing that they were tangible, only a heartbeat away. The memories are mine to hold forever – a story of a special time and place that I was once privy to.