Your schedule is as follows:
9:00 - 11:30 A.M—Ballet Technique
12:00 - 2:00 P.M—Corps de Ballet
2:30 - 4:00—Tap
4:30 - 7:00—Jazz and Hip Hop Combination
Time between classes should be spent warming up.
As the year progresses, schedules will shift as ballet rehearsals and performances take over and your minor focuses of dance are shed. By early September, this change will occur, and you will be dancing ballet from 9 to 7 six days per week.
With a half-eaten apple between the thumb and middle finger of my left hand, I clutch the paper Elara handed to me on Saturday evening in my right.
I read over my schedule again as I walk down a corridor faster than I'd like to for my first day of class, though I know the times as well as the palm of my hand.
It's only 8:45. You're fine, I think to myself and slow into a less embarrassing pace, readjusting the bag that's nearly fallen off my shoulder during the rushed journey from my room to Blonos's studio. It carries nothing of importance, really, besides my pointe shoes. A grey leotard, black tights, and ballet slippers are already on me, covered by a long-sleeved shirt and warm-up pants. I wrangled my hair into a fresh bun while I was back in my room. The bag's otherwise filled with useless things, like an old sweatshirt, legwarmers—which I hate by the way—and . . . I'm rambling.
I've tried to calm my mind. I woke up at six so I wouldn't feel rushed, but the extra minutes awake did no good—only offered time for me to make up wild scenarios of humiliation and terror in my head.
Yes, technically class doesn't start until nine. But written in between the lines of my schedule are highly recommended arrival and warm-up times, just as Elara wrote how time before class should be spent. Every decent dancer knows that. And particularly on the first day of class, I don't want to be an exception that knowledge.
Alongside each row of my schedule is a room number meaning next to nothing to me and a name. A teacher. Someone to criticize and judge me, a kind of person I haven't had in so long in terms of dance. Like the scorching lights of the stage, I do my best to welcome the thought of instructors calling me out and making me better.
You're not perfect, that voice tells me. Not that I ever said I was. I'm not Evangeline, who would probably die before admitting anything less. I need critiques, I need practice under the guidance of people who actually know what they're doing. This past six months . . . my teachers have been my memory and the occasional how-to video. So I'll take it. Every whispered comment, every yell from across the room when I'm doing something so blatantly wrong.
You're far from perfect, in fact.
Blonos's studio—or one of them, I mean to say—is situated on the third floor along with the other ballet classrooms. Far away from the tappers, who have the entire ninth floor to themselves. There's an almost certain chance one of those studios is right under my room, meaning those who tap full time will be keeping me up at night.
Stay on track, darling.
I've been on the third floor for a minute or two, winding my way through the hallways. I should've scoped things out last night, when I had time and still, unshaking fingers. Now I'm fairly sure I took a wrong turn at one point or another and question if I've lapped myself on this floor or not.
You haven't. You've been reading the numbers next to the doors. You're fine.
The voice of logic speaks yet again just as a thronging of women appear from the hallway coming up. They wear tight long sleeve shirts, the same baggy pants I wear made from some glossy material meant to contain heat, those ridiculous legwarmers, and ballet flats. Without a glance at me, they quickly disappear through the doorway at the end of my hall.
Professionals always wear all this extra crap to stay warm and avoid injuries, so I figured I should too. Seeing the other girls now, I'm glad I chose to show up in more than a leotard and tights. I hardly want to be the odd one out, especially now.
At my studio, I used to show up in the same clothes I had worn to school that day and would change into my leotard and tights in a small dressing room. There was nothing professional about it nor was it supposed to be. My classes back then were for recreation in the other girl's eyes, and only at the very back of my mind did I ever consider about someday going to a real dance school—
Enough. Enough.
I'm not the last one. The constant chatter of two girls behind me the hall at my back tells me that much. Still . . . 8:46? 8:47?
The door looms closer, and despite my fear, I force myself to go on.
It's just like going to a new school, I remind myself of the analogy again. I'll actually try to make friends here, unlike back at both my high school and my East Harlem studio, where I practically made being a loner into a campaign. Though I'll never understand the popular girls and their cliques; but since most of these people are adults, maybe it won't be that way. Just a few. Just a few friends.
All of a sudden, the door is in front of me, and I'm crossing through it. The time it took to walk from my room to here feels as fast and as slow as falling from the stage rafters. Just as painful too, but in a completely different sort of way. The fear has had so much more time to manifest, for my fingers to shake . . . for every muscle in my body to lock up.
More of a mental unrest than a fear for my life, I suppose.
You're being overdramatic. Again.
The room is glass and grey and light. And an absolute cavern.
Easily four times the size of the rooms I've cleaned, the walls of Blonos's studio are covered in streamlined mirrors ten feet tall; only the back wall, from where I enter, is without them and adorns that familiar cream paint. Beneath my flats rests grey vinyl, the reflection of overhead lights shining dully.
I look up and find those fluorescents a good two stories from my head. They gleam, though not clinically, making for a warm-enough atmosphere. With this studio on the Academy's interior, none of those classical golden windows grace its walls to reveal the summer sun, but something far more interesting catches my eye.
Wrapping around what should be considered the second story of the studio, is a balcony. A wrought-iron railing contains it, and there's probably ten feet of walking space between the railing and the wall opposite. Leaving plenty of room for . . . what, spectators? Teachers? Looking at it darkly, it reminds me of how overseers would watch workers in a work camp. One of the walls up there contains a panel of glass but reveals nothing more than another hallway through it; the rest of the walls are painted differently, more of a sandstone orange than cream.
Though my attention can't stay fixed on the architecture of the grand room for long, as it quickly shifts to the floor, dancers and rows of black barres orderly across it and at the walls.
The sixty-or-so men and women already in the studio don't pause their stretching as I enter, no more than another dancer to them in the room. Very few have yet discarded their warm-up clothes, instead wearing extra layers as they arch their backs, hyperextend their legs, and flourish their arms in both extreme and subtle stretches.
They're beautiful. Even their most simple of movements, from tendues to plies, are striking, full conviction.
A soft ballad plays from overhead speakers, and my eyes dash upward again, though I see no source of the sound.
Unsure of where to go, I stand rooted in place. From a quick glance, two dozen spots at the black barres remain open, beckoning me to them. My fingers grasp the strap of my bag as I glance around, but there aren't any cliques I can register with everybody relatively quiet in their stretches. No whispers or giggles like there were eternally in my studio, just a few murmurs from friend to friend. No groups. Good, but it'll still be a shot in the dark, a lethal game of cafeteria and—
"Anywhere you wish, Miss Barrow."
My capricious attention flicks once again from over my left shoulder to my right, where I find Blonos, Lady Blonos, Mistress Blonos, whatever she likes to be called, examining me with a stern yet curious glint to her eyes.
"What?" The word stumbles out, weak and uncertain while I struggle to look her in her dark, unforgiving eyes. I only register what she told me after the foolish word comes out. She's every bit as uptight and demanding as she was on stage Saturday night, now wearing a black cardigan wrap, some black shirt underneath, and to my dismay, black leggings that cut off past her pale knees.
I've hardly made it ten feet into the room, and I'm already frozen, Blonos's stare like bolts. Her lips stay perfectly sealed together while she assesses me, not answering my question. Probably fine details like the color of my hair and my height, things that will undoubtedly matter to her in some way later on.
I stay rooted in place, and I couldn't move if I tried. I hold her challenge, and I'd straighten my spine if it wasn't already. Her grey-white hair is pulled into a tighter-than-tight bun at her nape, and her shoulders are pressed backward. Everything about her is stiff, from her unyielding face to her interlaced, curled fingers, resting at her torso. Arguably worse than Elara.
Would I be like that, if I spent thirty years dancing?
"Anywhere you like. Your audition was good," she says simply, and I have to wonder if she held out on me only to set my nerves off. Blonos nods a few times as if she's agreeing with herself, before offering me a fraction of a smile, nothing more than a strained curve of her mouth. "I look forward to watching you dance."
My face almost flinches with surprise. Blonos. Stern, boring Blonos just said that to me. "Thank you," I say quietly and offer a little curtsy out of instinct, not knowing what else to do or say.
"Mmm-hmm."
Eyesight isn't needed to know she watches that simple, easy movement, and perhaps even my retreat across the room.
I decide on the end of a barre, the side further from the front mirror. My usual instinct would be to find the front of the room where I could best see the mirror, but I shove old habits down. If there is such a code here, I don't belong in the front. Not yet.
With a carefully-aimed look further down the mirror, I find the reflection of Blonos, who's blessedly lost attention in me and turned her focus to the doorway again. Like a hawk, she watches the last few dancers who come in pairs and trios, but no words come out of her mouth as they did for me.
Despite the small number of words, she did in fact speak to me. Compliment me.
My heart jumps up at my throat at the thought, and I shove it back down, dropping my bag at the barre's end. Before another person can claim it for their own, I settle myself at it, daintily touching, assessing the dark wood with the pads of my fingers. Very nice.
I wouldn't know if these people have learned a particular order of stretching throughout the years they've danced here, so I start up my old stretching routine, no different than the one I've been doing all these months in my room. And before that, back in the studio. On the barre, on the vinyl floor. Only here, there's scenery—dancers and light and piano music.
It's all about dance, a place to live and breathe dance and nothing else. And I don't mind it at all.
I readjust from one position to another, balancing a leg on the barre and laying the whole upper half of my body on top of it. Though I hardly need the warm-up, no ache in my hamstrings like there was earlier when I stretched in my room for an excessive amount of time. Open eyes stare at the floor under me and my foot on the ground, forgetting just a little bit about the other, highly-skilled dancers around me.
Until I bring my nose away from my shin, remove my ankle from the barre.
Among the other dancers, who also continue to be off in their own worlds, stands a new one, probably no older than nineteen. Young, like me and Evangeline. Young like Cal and Maven.
Vaguely, I realize I've seen her before. The girl has dark brown skin, the color of caramel, and eyes the color of storms, but far from sullen. Excited, whether it be from nervous energy or not . . . and a hint of kindness, if I'm not mistaken.
She was one of the other new Corps dancers on stage, one of the three who didn't have a partner.
I give her a tight smile and nod of acknowledgment, but then switch my legs and lean against my left in another easy stretch. I'm not sure exactly what that glimmer of emotion in her eyes is for, what it's out of.
She leans down too, copying my stretch. Our feet, both clad in new, frilly ballet slippers, soon to turn into ripped-up monstrosities, nearly touch in the process. The girl keeps her face pressed against her leg as she whispers, "My name's Iris." Her quiet talk is nothing strange or remarkable amidst the occasional tendril of conversation from one dancer to another. "Your dance was beautiful."
"Thank you," I say out of instinct. The corners of my lips tilt up against my shin, though they shouldn't. I should be stretching more, focusing wholly on it, and preparing for whatever insanity Blonos has in store for me in the next two and a half hours. "I'm Mare," I respond with my own name, but it's for no more of a reason than to have something to say. She already knows my name, along with everybody else in the studio.
"I would imagine it's going to get awfully tiring introducing yourself to all these ladies when they already who you are," Iris says, reading my thoughts.
I would imagine her smile into her leg is just as big as mine.
"One, two, three, four," Blonos croons as she drifts from one side of the room to the other, keen eyes meticulously skimming from one of us to another.
An actual pianist has come into the room, settling onto the bench before a grand piano tucked into the room's corner.
I've never felt so upright, though I force my shoulders to stay down and relaxed. Keep my fingers steady and stretching out in front of me for the pirouette after pirouette Blonos orders. Even when I was little and shy, I was fearless when it came to going to my studio that one time a week for ballet. Now . . . though I enjoy every single, double, and triple—and so on—pirouette and find nothing wrong with them myself—
"Five, six, seven, eight."
With her words, I prepare myself, pushing out my arms and stepping into fourth position. And turn.
I spot my head with every rotation, counting the number of times I see the wall in front of me. One, two, three . . . Blonos has made us turn around from the safety of the mirrors, and I no longer have somebody else to follow, left to the mercy of the wall.
Four, five, six.
Coming out of the turn on unwieldy legs and feet, thankfully, I land with my arms in a diagonal line, my front leg bent and the back straight. Six pirouettes.
I maintain my stare on the wall. I've been glad to learn in the past hour, with all of the basic, basic ballet we've done, that my teacher taught me a universal language. Preps and landings and fingers and arms are all the same, from the arabesques to the assemblés to the pirouettes. For as much as despised my ballet teachers for it at the time, I'm suddenly glad they forced me to learn French terminology for ballet class.
"Decent," she muses, walking between my row, which has become the front, and the second. "Once more. Then you can be done."
My feet, still in ballet slippers, don't balk at her words.
Faintly, I recall that somewhere in this room are Cal, Maven, and Evangeline. Ballet technique is for the entire ballet company, not just the Corps, filling the room with nearly a hundred dancers. Yet I've forgotten about all of them, even the ones I know, as we've gone through the basic motions of dance.
"One, two, three, four," Blonos calls again
I clench the muscles of my stomach, stand tall as Blonos begins, "Five, six, seven, eight," and I turn, strong and proud.
The room turns into a blur of glass and people even as I spot my head over and over.
I land, arms quickly going diagonal before they drop to my sides. I press my lips into a firm line.
Basic pirouettes, not even en pointe.
I begin to settle into myself—my body truly relaxing and me not forcing it to—even as I keep on wondering what's to come.