Tag: pointe

The Dying Swan

“Dad, I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can go on.”

I pressed my cell phone closer to my ear and glanced up at my feet. I was lying on the floor of the women’s dressing room in the Kentucky Center Theater, with my jacket beneath my head and feet perched up on a chair above me as I soaked in the smell of hairspray and sweat. I had stripped my toes of their tape and bandages so my calluses and blisters could breathe and noticed, as I listened to my dad speak to me through my cellphone, that the blister on my right heel had started to bleed again. 

“Honey, take a deep breath. You can do this. You’ve got only one more show, then you can take a nice long sleep.” 

My dad had talked me through my moments of pre-show stress and fatigue before, but this was different. Something felt very wrong.

“But…” I said as I turned my gaze up to the ceiling, “Dad, I really don’t think I can.”

Hearing myself say these words out loud brought me more fear than the thought of putting my tutu back on and dancing another show that night. I had worked my entire life for this moment – to dance as a demi-soloist in Swan Lake – and to hear myself say that I couldn’t go on for another show seemed unbelievable. To dance as a swan was a dream I never thought would come to fruition, and being casted to dance this role with the Louisville Ballet was beyond anything I could have imagined. 

Which was why it petrified me that I didn’t want to go back onstage. 

It wasn’t my pulsing ankles, sore back, bleeding toes, or infected toenail; those were aches and pains that I had learned to ignore after years of dancing. This feeling was new. It was a feeling so strong that my relentless willpower – which I frequently depended on for strength – felt diminished and weakened. As I listened to my dad’s voice I felt it grow stronger and stronger, defeating every attempt my willpower made to push it aside.

The feeling was utter exhaustion. 

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Swan Lake is considered to be one of the most strenuous ballets for female ballerinas. It consists of four acts, each being approximately 30-45 minutes in length, during which time the women are required to dance constantly as multiple characters. In Act One, I was a townswoman, in Act Two I was a swan, in Act Three I was a princess and in Act Four, a swan again. The ballet is a four-hour sprint of switching costumes and pointe shoes, running onstage, collapsing offstage from fatigue, then running back on again. It’s every ballerina’s dream.

I hung up the phone and stared at the ceiling. I listened to my heart beating, sending a pulse up through the tips of my inflamed toes. I knew I had to perform regardless of how I felt. I had no understudy, so even if I wanted to spend the show asleep in the dressing room, there would be no one available to dance my role.

We were two hours away from curtain, which provided me with just enough time to warm up, re-tape my feet, and touch up my hair and makeup. As I rolled over to my side with all of the strength I could muster, I heard the voices of my friends coming down the hallway from dinner. I pushed myself quickly to a standing position and fell into my chair. I couldn’t let anyone know how unwell I felt. They’ll think I’m unfit, incapable, I thought, too weak to dance. They’ll regret casting me. 

I took a hefty breath, pulled my shoulders back and lifted my chin high. And in the last few solitary moments of silence I had in the dressing room, I stared at myself in the mirror and said, “let’s do this.”

Something happened during that performance of Swan Lake. It was as though my body went into autopilot; every movement, every expression, every breath felt mechanical as though I was being controlled by something greater than myself. My body reacted to the show in the same way it always had: in Act Two, after dancing “The Four Little Swans Variation” with the three other demi soloists, the four of us collapsed to the floor to give our legs a rest until our next entrance two minutes later. In Act Three, the arches of my feet cramped so intensely that I had to hold back tears during my princess solo. In Act Four, I struggled to catch my breath from dancing and inhaling carbon dioxide being poured onto the stage by two immense fog machines in the wings.

Though I tried to share in the relief and happiness my friends felt after the closing performance, I couldn’t fight the underlying thought that something was wrong with me. 

Hours later I found myself in the nearest Urgent Care, standing beside a doctor, staring at a series of X-rays of my lungs. 

“So,” the doctor said, “we’ll need to run several more tests to be sure. Right now, we just know there’s something there – we just don’t know what it is yet.” 

I looked at the doctor, then back at the X-Ray. Everything fell silent. 

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, let my fingers dial the first number that popped into my head, and pressed my phone to my ear. 

“Mom, it’s me. I need to fly home. Tonight.”

The Audition

I walked down the narrow hallway and turned into the brightly lit room with my resume held tightly against my chest and my dance bag hanging off of my left shoulder. There were three walls lined with ballet barres and one wall covered in floor-to-ceiling mirrors. I walked to the closest corner, placed down my bag, pulled out my Ipod and headphones, and plugged away the empty sound of the room with my music. I looked up and saw five other dancers also sitting silently beside their bags, looking down at their Ipods. I checked the contents of my bag for the third time that morning – pointe shoes, pointe shoe padding, ballet shoes – then put on my heavy socks and legwarmers to warm up.

It was the Maryland Ballet audition – the first audition of the season. I had spent months preparing for this four-month season, with the hopes of  being offered a spot to dance with a company when I graduated from college. I had started auditioning when I was thirteen, and after eight years of receiving more rejection letters than acceptances and spending numerous car rides home in tears, I had finally grasped how to survive the auditions somewhat unscathed.

I flew into Maryland early that morning and took a cab straight to the studio, about an hour before registration time. Arriving early gave me time to go through my many pre-audition rituals: listening to my set music playlist, doing a series of crunches, spending thirty minutes practicing at the barre, and stretching. The worst thing to do before an audition is to acknowledge the other dancers – especially those who intentionally stand in the center of the room, pulling their legs to their ears, hoping to intimidate their competition –  which is why my eyes remained down, playing music at a high volume through my headphones, until it was time for registration. 

At eleven o’clock a woman came into the dance room, now packed with dancers, and announced that registration had begun. I picked up my resume but didn’t rush to the door; it’s best not to be the first to register. Having any numbers between “1” and “8” on your chest during an audition is a mistake – especially if the auditioner teaches the dance combinations quickly. It’s best to be numbers 10, 11, or 12. Dancers are always lined up in number-order during auditions, and those numbers always guarantee a spot in the second dance group and, very often, a spot in the front line. This always gave me more time to perfect the dance steps, yet still perform them early enough so that the judges hadn’t seen too many dancers before me.  

I counted the number of dancers walking to the door, and slipped behind the ninth girl. I followed them quietly down the hallway, turned in my resume, and pinned a piece of paper with the number “10” on my black leotard.

The audition started an hour later, and by that time all of us looked exactly the same; pink tights, black leotards with numbers pinned on them, hair pulled back in slick buns, and pointe shoes on our feet. I scanned the room for the highest number and saw one woman wearing the number “102.” We were led to the main dance room  – all one hundred and two of us – and were told to stand at the ballet barre in number order. Once we all had a spot at the barre, we were packed so tightly that I barely had enough room to open my arms to the side. 

Three women sat at the front of the room, one older woman and two fairly younger ones, behind a large table with our resumes piled in the center. I stood with my feet turned out and hands clasped behind my back, waiting for the director – a tall, thin man with glasses – to speak.

“Welcome to the Maryland Ballet audition,” he said, “I’m Robert Creed, the Artistic Director. We’ll be looking at you one at a time, so please be still and silent while you wait.”

Though no dancer spoke at these words – no one would ever dare to speak during an audition – I could sense from the energy in the room that everyone else hated these pre-audition protocols just as much as I did. The older woman stood from the table with a clipboard in her hand and walked with Mr. Creed to the dancer wearing number “1” on her chest. I looked away immediately. My heart started to race, and I could feel sweat accumulating on my forehead. I hated watching them do this to dancers – sometimes it was worse watching it than actually experiencing it. I took several deep breaths, keeping my eyes to the floor, until it was my turn.

“Stand in first position,” said Mr. Creed.

I turned out my feet as much as I could, opening my chest and pressing my shoulders down so my neck looked longer. I stared forward as the woman walked around me, writing notes on her clipboard about my body type, musculature, and proportions. 

“Tendu á la seconde,” he said. 

I followed his instructions, opening my right leg, then my arms to the side and shaping my fingers carefully, with my thumb and middle fingers curved slightly more than the others. The woman wrote for a moment, then nodded. The director walked toward me, lifted my leg and stretched it, pushing it closer and closer to my ear until it couldn’t go any farther, then released it.

“Next,” Mr. Creed said as he moved on to number 11.

After what felt like another forty-five minutes of standing, the individual evaluations had finished. Mr. Creed took the clipboard from the woman, walked to the front of the room, and cleared his throat. 

“Thank you all for coming today,” he said quickly, “as you know, there are many of you here – so I would like numbers 5, 27, 32, 34, 58 and 80 to stay. Everyone else may go.”

By this point in my dance career, I had experienced too many rejections to let myself feel upset for too long. Instead, I nodded my head and joined ninety-six other women toward the hallway and into the waiting room. All together – in perfect unison – we pulled out our phones from our dance bags and called our cabs to the airport. 

When I got to the Martin State Airport I did the same thing I had done many times before, when I had six hours to spare at a terminal during audition season. I found the nicest restaurant in the airport, ordered lunch and a glass of Sprite, bought a book, and didn’t stop reading until it was time to board my plane and go home.