The music starts -- a crisp but gentle tinkling melody bleeding forth from what one can only assume is a music box. It is a flowing, delicate, nostalgic sound, not unlike a lullabye meant to encourage tame and pleasant dreams in a child. The swelling chorus of chimes drifts throughout the echoing darkness, as if searching for listening ears to indulge in it's beauty.
By some sort of cue, a faint beam of light descends upon a stage that appears from the bleak nothing, and into said beam, something begins to emerge. A sparkling shoe, glistening in the newfound luminance, glides into view of the void from whence it came, then following it is the rest of the graceful being. She is the picture of a telltale ballerina, tall on her pointed toes and extending legs; the skirt of her leotard feathering out weightlessly from her waist; her hair molded into the perfection of a plastic bun at the crest of her head. Though, one detail is unusual; upon her porcelain doll face, with lips and cheeks red as rose, her eyes lay sealed under her purple laden lids birthing flawless fans of lashes.
Despite this blindness, at the next loop of the song, she assumes the first position, the heel of one foot perpendicular to the arch of the other. Holding her arms in a low loop before herself, her left arm wafts outward in an unerring wave to her left side, the motion mirrored with the right arm in tandem. At the next measure, she falls into a low grand plie, then gravity loses its influence over her as she floats back up, only her toes keeping her anchored to the ground. The axis of her body tilts forward and, to counteract the shift, one of her only supporting pillars lifts backward, leaving her hovering off the ground, if not for the steady, unwavering leg insisting to bear her entirety.
A new force acts upon her whilst the chorus is repeated. Her body immediately twists as she kicks out the elevated leg strongly, but with no effort, sending her spinning on her singular pier. This seems humanly impossible, as her pointe doesn't look to be grinding against the floor, and more like it is making no contact at all. The way she arcs her back to nearly meet her toe with her forehead while winding about like a spinning top is a marvel that secretly instills pain in the bones of her nonexistent audience. She is impossible. She is not human.
The truth has been clear from the beginning. Her skirt and hair are plastic, which is what makes them precisely so immobile; her face is sculpted, as though truly made from porcelain; her eyes lay shut because she does not need to see, only dance. She knows to dance because it is all she is made to do. She knows the dance because she is made to perform it every time the music plays. When there is silence, she goes back to being like plastic. She goes back to being nothing but a machine with no use in the darkness.
The light is suddenly gone. The music stops.