Dancer Alone
By Ether (Skadi, IdiosyncraticInk)
"We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams." -anonymous
The dancer stood alone.
A troupe of ballerinas strung with ribbons glittered upon the stage of the darkened theater, but the dancer stood alone.
The music parading, the ballerinas jetéing, but behind them, movement stops and music glides away, a sudden deafness falling.
The dancer waits, her pale gauzy skirt fluttering ghost-like, skimming her child's knees. The dancer waits in a pointed fourth preparation, her arms in a soft, rounded shape before her, the muscle in her extended leg pulsing.
She, the one in the audience, knows this position—the flex of the ankle, the quiet fire flickering its way up the leg, the eyelids shuddering with forced calm. She knows it because it is how she stands before her torso jerks and her knife flings out in one cutting, ice-thin thrust, all power and no beauty, the adrenaline shooting up each of her vertebrae like sniping needles as she flicks through her enemy's throat.
But this dancer breathes, her flat chest filling and rising with thin stage air, and brings that leg behind her, the muscle still throbbing, and as it is lifted off the ground, pulled from the hip, the knee bends and the foot approaches the flattening muscle of the thigh, a tendon deep under the skin being stretched tight.
She, the one in the audience, knows this position—the bend is the same, the pull of the tendon is the same, the protest of the muscle straining to burst out of the skin is the same. That is the way the back leg crouches, the thigh tautening and tautening as it is brought closer and closer to the ground in a deepening plié, just before it is unleashed in one vicious swing that rips from the pulled thigh to the clenched foot, beating a savage kick that slices into the flesh as soon as it leaves, a bruise blossoming in its wake and leaving the cheeks flushed and hot with the fight.
But this dancer brings her bent leg, her attittude pose, higher and higher into the empty air, pressing up, pressing up, quivering with the effort. A sliver of muscle clenches like rock beside her tailbone, her back curving out, every bit of skin shaking with agony and strain, as slowly, slowly the contorted foot with the poised toes is brought to a still, the dancer's head thrown back with the pain running up her trembling muscles like electricity.
She, the one in the audience, knows this position—the head driven back with silent, inexpressible grief, the toes melded together with force, the terrified shots ripping apart the thigh. That is her vulnerable moment, her cry of shock from the ground as she kicks one leg up, pure momentum propelling her in a backwards somersault to crash in a frenzy on her knees, the sword stabbing into the earth she kept warm just seconds ago.
But this dancer seals her eyes shut as if in one last prayer, and, with just her will and raw force left, she raises the heel of the foot on the ground, pressing up through the ankle, her whole body shuddering, and her calf swelling into a hard stone as she rises onto relevé.
She, the one in the audience, knows this position—the shift of weight, the grounding of the splayed toes, the flush of muscle climbing up the tensed leg. She knows it because it is her one ghost of a gentle past, a civilized upbringing, a ladylike education, hunting her down in the way her other obediently pointed foot rises, whispering against her other knee softly in a perfect possé, her leg lifting as a seared whole, and pounding her knee into the stomach of her oncoming attacker with a graceful, thrusting, blunt movement.
But this dancer smiles—faintly, fleetingly, a glimpse of teeth—and then both feet are on the floor again, the deafness has passed, the music roars to life, and time starts again as her movements are blurred into the crowd, the moment gone, the dancer lost.
The dancer is still alone.