Various Positions (11 page)

SIX

A few days later, we were waiting for Roderick to come in and start our pointe class. I sat beneath the barre in Studio A and examined my feet. I had just tied on my new pointe shoes. They were Freed of London, fitted by the school’s specialist the day before. The shoe’s vamp made a stiff tomb around the top of my foot so that my toes felt impenetrable, ready to be thwacked into the floor. The ribbons were in perfect contrast, delicate and soft, such a pale pink that they were barely pink at all. If I rocked my legs slowly to the right, the sun from the window mottled the satin like gasoline on the surface of a puddle. I pointed my toes and felt a new strength scuttle down my calves and into my ankles, ricochet off the arches of both feet.

The girls beside me were talking.

“Do you know the one with blond hair and big teeth? She’s in grade ten,” Veronica said. “She’s really skinny.”

“Not as skinny as the French girl,” Molly said.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t look good. She’s weird skinny. It’s not spaced out the right way.”

“The blond girl’s just as skinny,” Anushka said.

Veronica was shaking her head. “Okay, maybe if you put them both on a scale, but the French girl’s shoulders are too high or something. It makes her look stiff.”

“I like that girl Alana in grade twelve,” Anushka said. “She has the perfect body.”

“Yeah,” Molly said. “Pretty amazing.”

“Yeah,” Veronica agreed, “it’s good for ballet but she still has other options. I mean, if she decides to do something else with her life she’ll still be really hot.”

“I bet Roderick likes her body,” Molly said.

The girls looked at one another, moved inward as they giggled.

“Do you think he notices?” Anushka asked.

“Of
course
he notices. He still has a dick.” Veronica had her chest on the floor, her legs splayed in middle splits. “And”—she pulled her body forward with her hands so that her legs bent like a frog’s—“I heard that something happened between him and a student once.”

“What?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

Anushka moved in closer. “Like
sex
?”

“It’s possible.”

“Who told you?” Molly asked.

“No one actually told me. I just heard the rumor.”

The girls drew nearer to Veronica as though pulled instinctively. Veronica was silent now but the idea was there. Sex. I could tell that the girls wanted to ask more, but it was like they couldn’t find the right questions. Veronica flipped onto her back so that her body imitated the curve of a canoe. She rolled a shoulder back, arm stretched to the ceiling.

“I mean, I have no idea if it’s true.”

There was a noise in the doorway. Roderick stepped into the studio, walked quickly across the room.

“Ladies.” He placed his briefcase on the piano and smiled. “Where do I get off being so late?” His eyes went to the clock on the wall. It was fifteen minutes after the scheduled start of class. He whispered something to the pianist, then turned back to face us. “I need a volunteer.”

I caught my breath. His entrance had happened so quickly and now he was looking over the group of us, waiting for someone to raise their hand.

“No? Not one brave soul among you?” He undid the cuffs of his shirt and moved to the center of the room. Then he rolled up his sleeves, folding instead of scrunching. “If you could all come together a little.” He moved his hands toward each other. “Form an audience.”

I got up and moved with the others in the direction he had indicated. My leotard crept up my bum. I pulled on the elasticized bottom, forced it lower on my hip as I sat back down. Roderick was making a strange face, squinting on the top, smiling on the bottom, as though he was pleased and displeased at the same time.

“We can wait here all day if you’d prefer. Les Grands Ballets Canadiens will be busy training the stars of tomorrow, but I’m happy to whittle away the time doing nothing.”

There was a sound in front of me. Molly stood up.

“Ah.” Roderick pressed his lips together, nodded. “Good.”

I looked up the long seams of Molly’s tights. The left one went crooked right below the swell of her bum cheek.

“Thank you, Molly. Please, come and stand up here.”

She walked around the other girls so that she was standing beside Roderick. She looked at him, waited for more instructions. There were no emotions on her face, and I knew she was trying to do as Veronica had advised us.

“I just want you to stand here. Pick a position that’s comfortable to stand in, like first position or
cou-de-pied
.”

Molly nodded. Roderick moved around us. I turned my head to see him lean his body into the corner at the far end of the room. Molly took a few steps backward, making more space between herself and the audience, and moved her right foot behind her ankle into
cou-de-pied
.

“Good. That’s fine, Molly. Now just stay up there and relax. Imagine you’re onstage, waiting to dance your segment.”

Molly inhaled and made the final adjustments to her position. Her expression was still absolute nothingness, and it impressed me. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to stay so neutral for so long.

“In the meantime,” Roderick continued, “we’re going to watch you. Because that’s what audiences do.”

There was a little murmuring around me.

“Is that clear, ladies? I want you to watch Molly as though she’s a dancer who’s caught your eye in the
corps de ballet
.”

Sixty was sitting beside me and I could feel her eyes veer my way, but I didn’t look at her. I looked up at Molly and tried to do as Roderick had said. What would I think of Molly if I just happened to see her onstage? The first thing I’d notice was her height; she was probably the tallest fourteen-year-old I knew. She was very skinny too, but it was a skinniness that looked natural, like there was just too much of her for any amount of food to fill. She had a small face, high cheeks round as plums. Her mass of hair was slicked tight to her scalp, black as underground oil. I scanned the length of her legs. Pink tights on brown skin made an ashy color. I could tell her feet were powerful; they were big and the one in
cou-de-pied
showed off a protuberant arch.

“How tall are you, Molly?” Roderick asked from behind us.

“Five-nine.”

Roderick paused. “Hmm. And still growing?”

“Um, I don’t know.”

“How tall are your parents?”

“My mom’s just five-six.”

“And your dad?”

She looked down at her feet for a moment. “Pretty tall, I guess.”

There was a pause. “Can you go up onto pointe for us, Molly?”

She was about to say something but Roderick beat her to it.

“Just
relevé
into fifth position. I don’t care what you do with your arms.”

I thought I saw a new tightness around Molly’s mouth. She placed her
cou-de-pied
down on the floor and
pliéd
in fifth position. Then she snapped her feet together so that she was standing on pointe, one leg crossed snugly over the other. The impression was powerful. Her body became an endless pike of muscle.

“I have news for you, Molly.” Roderick had pushed himself out of his corner and was walking slowly up the side of the audience. “You’re not five-nine anymore.”

She lost her balance a little and had to move her front foot. “Okay.”

“You’re about six foot two now, which is a good five inches taller than the average male dancer.”

Molly kept her eyes fixed.

Roderick crossed his arms over his chest and turned his body toward us.

“So actually, we can’t imagine Molly as a dancer who’s caught our eye in the
corps
, because Molly will never get a job in the corps. Or at least not the corps of any reputable classical company. She’s just too tall.”

I looked at Molly. Would she be able to stay in control of her feelings? She tottered to the left again and had to move her foot to keep her balance.

“You can roll down now.”

She did as she was told but I saw the first flicker of defeat in her eyes.

“Now don’t look glum.” Roderick was moving toward her. “It’s not as though you were any shorter when we accepted you last spring.” He was just a foot or two away from her now and he stopped. “Some of the best ballerinas of all time have been as tall as you. Suzanne Farrell. Sylvie Guillem. And their height wasn’t a disadvantage to them. No. It wasn’t a disadvantage at all. It made them magnificent.” He crossed in front of Molly and stopped at her side. “So that’s your challenge. That’s your work cut out for you. Your height means that you have to be better than good; you have to be the best. Do you think you can be the best?”

“Um.” She pinched the strap of her bodysuit, looked at the floor. “I don’t know.”

A meanness smeared Roderick’s expression. “Well, that’s a problem.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I know either.”

I watched Molly process this.

“But we’ll find out. When the company directors come to watch you dance at the end of senior year, they have to pick you out and say, I want that girl as a soloist. They may look at someone else and say, hmm, she’s talented, let’s take her on as an apprentice and see how it works out. But you, no way. They need to be able to hire you on the spot and drop you straight into their toughest repertoire. There isn’t likely to be more than one male dancer over six-two in that company, and you’ve got to prove that you’re worthy of him.” Roderick shook his head. “Okay, Molly. Go sit down.”

She looked surprised for a moment, as though she’d misheard him, but then she rejoined us, lowered her body to the floor. Roderick just stood there. A piece of hair dipped over his forehead and he swung it away without using his hand.

“The point of that wasn’t to pick on Molly. It was an example for all of you. We could take the time to go through that process with everyone, and we will, one on one. You all have your individual challenges and it’s crucial that you know what they are from the outset so that you can monitor them from here on in. Because otherwise”—he lifted his hands in the air, shrugged—“what are we doing here?”

He turned around and took a few steps with his back to us.

“All right, ladies. Everyone at the barre.”

He talked us through the first exercise. He nodded at the pianist and the music began, languid, drippy notes running into the notes beside them. We bent our knees, made diamonds of negative space, lifted heels into ankles. The end brought a suspension,
soutenu
in fifth. I lifted my arms.

“Stop.”

The music stopped. My arms found my sides and we turned as a group to face Roderick. He was marching across the studio to the barre, heading to where Veronica stood. I saw a tiny flash of fear on her face.

Roderick motioned toward her. “You go back to that last position.”

Veronica hesitated for a half second then put her hand back on the barre. She lifted the other arm, resumed the
soutenu
in fifth. Her focus shot forward, deliberately unflinching. She was still as a statue; her pale hair caught the light.

Roderick turned to the rest of us. “What is
that
?” He pointed at her hand. “Those fingers,” Roderick continued. “Yikes.”

I looked at her fingers. Technically they were in the right position, her middle finger dropping to her thumb, the index finger isolated and lifted. But I saw what Roderick was talking about. They looked wooden, complicated, like a severed set of antlers. She must have been double-jointed, because her thumb even curved the wrong way.

“Jesus, that’s going to keep me up at night.” He turned away from her, fluttered his hand over his shoulder the way a king dismisses a servant. “Put that thing away.”

Veronica lowered her heels to the ground, let her arm drop to her side. She suddenly looked very young, not fourteen but more like seven, a kid lost at a crowded mall.

“Where the hell did you learn that?” Roderick was pinching the bridge of his nose, shaking his head.

“I don’t know,” she answered quietly.

“No, tell me. Where did you train?”

“The local school in St. Catharines.”

“Called?”

“The Niagara School of Ballet.”

“The Niagara School of Ballet,” he repeated slowly. “Wow.” He brought his hand to his stomach. “That just about killed my lunch.”

Veronica stood very still, stony across her shoulders.

Roderick talked us quickly through the next exercise, then went back to his usual corner behind the piano, slinked his body between the two walls. His eyes pulled into two narrow sneers and there was a tilt in the line of his lips, like he was just a breath away from laughter. Why did he want to laugh at us? It was as though, without knowing it, we had collectively done something ridiculous. I could see Veronica on the opposite barre. She was biting the inside of her cheeks and her eyes had the tender look of someone who’s just taken off her glasses. I figured she was doing everything to keep her feelings from boiling up onto her face.

When Roderick dismissed us, we walked as a group back to the change room, lifting our heads only to swig back water or wipe perspiration from our brows. No one spoke and the distant warble of piano chords sounded as sad as funeral music. Sixty found my side and we drifted together without looking at each other. When we got to the change room, Veronica and Molly dropped their T-shirts and reusable water bottles and hugged.

“You were so good,” Molly said after a moment. “You didn’t even flinch.”

“You too,” said Veronica. “You were totally deadpan.”

“I thought I was going to hyperventilate.”

“You couldn’t tell,” Veronica assured her. “I couldn’t even see you breathe.”

Anushka and Sonya moved in toward the girls and took turns hugging both of them. Anushka whispered that she was
so sorry
and Sonya said she’d heard that it was a good sign to get picked on first. Sixty looked at me, her expression steady with compassion, and moved in to hug them as well. Molly was crying now, and Veronica handed her a box of Kleenex from the bottom of her locker. I tried to join the group of them, moved over as much as I could so that I was in the general hub of activity, but I didn’t know what to say or how to initiate a hug without looking stupid.