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Three

The arms extended just enough, relaxed never, are open to cradle the most precious air, like an angel holding the earth, or releasing what has entered the body—by way of the trunk and the back—through the arms and out the hands toward the heavens. To feel a mere fraction of this, for yourself, slowly push the air away with the back of your hand.

Bertrand called their little group un equipe. Every time we met in Montreal, he never stopped his crazy chatter until he returned to Quebec. I didn’t need convincing; I wanted to prove I could overcome anything. I tried not to think of Daniel over me, big hands on my back, soaking me with sweat on our second-last night. If he just got cold feet and planned to return, then the break would make our reunion that much better. And ignoring him would make him want me even more; he’d see what a hit our little company was—New York—and how I was not a threat to him, and how serious I really was about my dancing, then he’d want me. I wasn’t going to mope around Montreal and envy the ones he danced with, choreographed for, had cigarettes with, disappeared for—or to—his fucks and tricks and protegés. I had my own life to live. I tried so hard not to think of Daniel.

Empty pockets, empty bank account, and stuffed on another bus with all my crap, I’d show him. Dry heater in my face. Frosty late September morning air, a prelude to winter, raced down from the Les Laurentides in the north and across the highway to Quebec City. On that ride I must have dozed. I saw the boy, me, walking through the ravine in a yellow raincoat, matching yellow hat, black galoshes, my tight pink fists holding a crumpled painting of dancers, the colours running and fading in the rain. My mother told me to show the class what a wonderful artist I was. How proud I should be. The cold autumn sleet rushed me along, the wind splashed me into puddle after puddle. Coat, hat, boots filling with icy October water. Paint washed away. Up and rush. Hands red with blood and paint and chill and pebbles in the flesh. Up and rush. Up and rush. Hot and damp in yellow. The yard was empty. Everyone was dry in the warm brick building. The heavy door gave quickly and I tumbled into my seated teacher and class, gathered for their rainy day story. Bloody nose, snot and tears ran over my upside-down smile. My gasps were drowned by snorts and giggles, chortles of childish laughter from slouched kids as the plump teacher’s ass sagged over the tiny seat of the wooden chair. I strangled the art.

In Quebec City I stayed at Madame “Smoke-cough-ska’s” house. I will never understand the link between the physical demands and stamina a dancer must have, and the ability to smoke in spite of it. Madame met my bus in her rusting crayon-orange Volvo station wagon that smelled a nauseating combination of fresh and stale cigarette smoke and rotting apple juice mingling with kiddy poop. Madame had dropped the posturing, let her hair down, but was in full makeup. Regardless of the filth, she had a pristine allure as if she had just stepped out of a Blackglama magazine ad. All she spoke of was Jean-Marc: “He’s finally coming into his own.”

We chugged into Sainte-Foy. “He’s got charisma and energy like the dancers I knew in Hungary.” We coasted up to her peeling bungalow, surrounded by yellow grass and no trees. I was starting to feel defeated and inadequate and I hadn’t even so much as sautéed for Madame. I wondered if she had already started with the head games or if she was simply oblivious to my presence. “He’s lean, handsome and hungry for it. I remember what that was like.” The last sentence was another silent mantra that aging dancers lived by, usually followed by a wistful sigh, as they swallowed their bitterness back into their core and secretly prayed those nearby would whisper about their greatness in the past, saying things like, “She had amazing technique,” or, “His was the definitive Albrecht.” I followed along the cracked walkway, to the front door, as she shoved children’s toys aside with her foot and cursed under her breath before announcing, “He will make our name in New York.”

Was I surrounding myself with people obsessed with anyone but me? Everyone loves to talk about how much they are in love, or attracted to so-and-so. But I had been around enough male dancers who had impressed the pants off someone, and even been described as the next Godunov or Baryshnikov, and they wisely rode that wave of enthusiasm. Those were the ones who knew they had an ace in their pocket. Others had no faith in that allure and had slept with Kharkov, perish the thought, or his wife—which made Kharkov even happier—or with anyone who could help them along the way. And there were tons of Jean-Marcs to be obsessed about, which led inevitably to someone’s heartache or break, while they forged their own route to the top.

Madame led me into the house, took off her coat, revealing her walking-anatomy-lesson taut torso and medium-sized breasts with no bra, amazing for a woman her age. She knew it. She dropped her coat, almost on a chair, and then rifled through her bag to finally find a cigarette, which she lit and took a drag on. She led me to the kitchen. The house itself looked like it had been ransacked and I was waiting for her reaction, but none was forthcoming. This mess was de riguer. In the kitchen, she leaned over the cluttered counter. “When I first saw you I wasn’t sure. You have blankness in your eyes. Are you sad or just hesitant? And there is something very uneven about your face. Your nose.” She grimaced as she choke-talked, “But now I see you again and I think maybe you are handsome.”

“I banged it on the bottom of the pool.”

“Playing pool? Hmmm.”

“Not playing…”

“You could get it fixed.”

“It hasn’t affected my dancing.”

She tapped her ashes effortlessly into the sink.

The studio was situated on a road that led toward the walled part of town. It was simply a sad fluorescent-lit, linoleum classroom on the top floor of a 1950s beige brick high school that had been converted to a clinic for mental patients. When the wind blew up the slope, the windows howled. No sprung wood floor. No showers; we changed in the bathroom across the hall. After class the girls used talcum. We used cologne; Jean-Marc shared his collection of Drakkar, Pierre Cardin and Christian Dior for our stinking armpits. Bells went off at weird times, people in white coveralls, lab coats, pyjamas or nothing at all ran down halls. Hortense, the pianist, arms like water balloons, hammered everything from Chopin to Delibes to Tchaikovsky with the same heavy hand.

I wanted to believe that Madame’s classes were the best I had ever taken. I told myself that this was it. Yes, it was gruelling; my thighs screamed every moment with every plié. Madam had an incredible imagination when it came to putting together a class—the barre was intricate and rigorous, although she seemed to have a habit of forgetting what she had showed us. Regardless, it was hard: from a full plié in first position she would have us développé so that we were being supported by one fully bent leg. She seemed to do whatever she could to make our thighs scream and our calves seize up. I might have been starting to get my form back, feeling my legs stretch, feeling my arches once again, and starting to feel like everything was finding its former place within my body, but it seemed too ambitious, and I was too physically worn to sleep well. But I told myself—in the glow of the newness of the experience, and of Madame Talegdi’s allure and charisma—that it would make me great.

The days were full. At nine in the morning the six of us had company class, with Hortense at the piano and Madame stomping out the beat for two hours. We extended our tired muscles and followed her commands through a series of pliés, tendus, battements, with the aid of a barre. “Don’t hold the damn thing like you are trying to strangle a cat,” she’d shout. I was developing bad habits all over again; I used to rest my hand lightly, if at all, on the barre, but now I needed it for most of my support. The second half of the class there was adage floor work, where we danced and danced and danced—worked on our jumps, turns and everything you could do from one corner to the other. Although there was an air of competition, I doubt they would have acknowledged it. Dancers watch not only themselves, but others, to measure their progress. Following this, Madame would alternate later mornings with a follow-up men’s class—more thigh-bursting held pliés, Ukrainian kicks, Russian splits, endless leaps, tours en l’air, grand jeté en tournante, exercises that focused on male capabilities, designed to exploit the major muscle groups, all interspersed with endless sets of one-armed push-ups with the heal of her Capezio digging into our backs. (She knew how to work a man.) People say that a male dancer’s role is to support the woman. Balanchine said ballet is purely a female thing. And I say it’s not fair: go to any classical ballet and tell me the man doesn’t fly or spin or become airborne for supernatural lengths of time, and I’ll know you slept through it.

Madame had the good sense to alternate our men’s class with women’s pointe class every other day. Jean-Marc, Bertrand and I would watch the women’s class closely, but during our class, Maryse, Chantal and Louise would talk in the lunchroom to the extent that Madame would have to shout for them to shut up. After lunch we would all have a short warm-up at the barre, then a pas de deux class. It was odd and good to have such a small group; the good being that we danced so much more than one would in a large group, the odd being that I knew my body was undergoing some fundamental changes and I wasn’t really sure what my condition would be when I came out the other end.

To finish up the day, we rehearsed sections of repertoire, including Madame’s ballets. I rest my case: if it looks like dancers work longer hours than athletes, that’s because it’s the truth—which is to a dancer’s disadvantage. The body needs a sufficient amount of rest and recovery as well as nutrition when it is this active. The ballet world, built on obsession, competition and starvation will never figure this out. It is cemented into a tradition that involves an outdated work ethic. The dancer’s fitness regimen involves hours of physically demanding repetition (why else would it look so easy onstage?), optional cigarettes, mixed with coffee and no food. The law of diminishing returns has never been read to the dance world.

Maryse and Chantal kept their noses turned up at me when I was partnering them, when I was beside them at the barre, when I was dancing next to them and when I was anywhere near them for that matter—fortunately it was perfect ballet posture. I had no qualms about staring at their chests, it made them horribly self-conscious—they needed to get out in the bigger world and see how far being a little league bitch would get them. And I noticed everything: when Maryse got thinner, Chantal seemed to put on weight, as if no stray pounds would leave our little company. But Maryse looked like death in this condition, which, paradoxically, made her perfect for the children’s roles that called for waif-like fairies, sylphs, fireflies or something equally translucent. Chantal did her best to disguise her expanding thighs with a variety of sheer rehearsal skirts, and I had the misfortune of being her pas de deux partner while Jean-Marc partnered only the skeletal Maryse, making him look even more capable.

Sometimes Bertrand shared Louise with me. She was the only one who responded like a real performer. She had instinct, trust, generosity and perhaps even a crush on me; she always looked at me with a grin and a twinkle in her eye as though we were sharing a private joke. On this particular day we danced together rehearsing the pas de deux from Minkus’s Paquita. Both of us knew the choreography more or less, although we had never danced it together. As Hortense crucified the music as if she were nailing Jesus to the cross and making damn sure he wouldn’t get away, Louise and I flew beyond the staleness of that crummy little studio. Madame stood silent and the other two couples finally stopped their cumbersome, indulgent and weighty movements to watch as well. If Louise hadn’t been Bertrand’s woman, I would have made her my dance partner for life. There was a natural sensitivity in every move we made; every lift, every turn, we became one, and far more than one when we danced.

Later that week, we were to rehearse one of Madame’s creations set to Debussy’s “La Mer,” and based on Grimm’s Little Mermaid. Jean-Marc, her Neptune, was late and had not called in. Madame was visibly shaken by this lack of etiquette, so I stepped in. I took my place and watched Madame slide across the classroom, arms carving the air, her footwork an intricate swirl of triplets. She swam me from an imaginary giant clam, to Louise, bourréeing as Les Algues, an overgrown piece of seaweed. I followed slowly. We call it marking; in the whole ballet theatre world we call it marking. You rarely, if ever, dance full out when initially learning the choreography.

“You’re not going to move like that!” she shouted after I traced the steps, head down, arms grasping the air, counting out the beats. “Of course not, Madame.”

“Go and sit down.” Madame choked, turned red, leaned on the barre.

Louise rat-a-tatted something to her and then muttered to me under her breath, “Madame hates marking. She’d rather see you get it wrong full-out, than have you mark it.”

But Madame shouted back short and quick at Louise, “Mes nerfs!” She stood by the window and lit a cigarette.

Louise rolled her eyes then whispered, “Make her choreography look difficult. Does that make sense?”

It didn’t matter. Even if I did pirouettes on my ear, Jean-Marc had stood her up.

Madame continued to make things more difficult. She altered the choreography, put in extra lifts, made them last longer. My repertoire became rife with adagios with laboriously slow lifts from Albinoni to Telemann. To my credit, Chantal and Louise appreciated a male who didn’t gasp in a presage or a cambré.

Only one of them, Saint-Saëns’s “The Carnival of the Animals,” provided any real dancing challenges. My only other hope was a piece she was putting together to Holst’s The Planets, but even then I had been assigned all adagios while Jean-Marc and Bertrand were allowed to allegro. True, adagios showed off my line, but I had the quickest entre-chat, and tighter and cleaner footwork. One bright spot remained—Chantal’s bullying: if I placed my hands on her waist for a lift, she would dig her nails into my wrists, and on pointe she would shift aggressively to make it look like I didn’t have her on her centre; she would pull at my arms, or go limp spontaneously, and Madame could see through it. If anyone were to shit on me it would be Madame and Madame alone. “Chantal you are dancing like a dead marionette. Qu’est ce que vous faites? Enough! Monsieur Rottam is a dancer, not a cheese-maker!” Thank God someone else had incurred Madame’s wrath.

One Monday, after one too many lifts and not enough dancing, I pressed her, “Madame, when do we start rehearsing Rimbaud? Shouldn’t we be rehearsing Rimbaud? And what are the exact dates? Which theatre in Harlem? The Apollo? The Company performed there. Before my time of course, but I’ve seen the pictures, just after the Apollo reopened and then closed.”

“It’s the Harlem School of Music.”

“That’s in Brooklyn. It’s the Brooklyn Academy of Music.”

“Harlem.”

“But—the Dance Theatre of Harlem?”

“And unless you can convince me as Verlaine…”

At that point Chantal ran out of the room in tears.

“Chantal! Christ!”

Louise giggled. “Chantal’s afraid of New York.”

“Maybe she’s afraid of herself,” I added.

I’d taken a wrong turn. I started doubting Madame, and once I lose trust, I am gone; that’s when my eyes go blank, I suppose. Slowly day by day, class by class, rehearsal after rehearsal, the thought crept over me that I had little to do but recover, get strong, get some cash and then get out of there.

The next day, I inquired about payday, with not much money to spare, and they laughed. We were on a break in the small kitchen off the classroom. As usual I was deaf to the Québécois rat-a-tatting going on around me. I had practised my question. “Et bien, quand est-ce que nous reçeverons nos salaire?”

“Didn’t Bertrand tell you? The classes are our payment,” said Maryse, in quite good English, which was a shock since she hadn’t spoken to me since we first met. She obviously took great joy in being able to deliver such bad news. I had had enough free classes to know this was not a bonus. In smaller places, men’s fees were always overlooked. Madame definitely owed us. Besides this, I started to see her innovative exercises as masochistic, designed to destroy line, over-build thighs, and make me strong, like Madame, but too tight. What had worked for her at the academy in Budapest wouldn’t work for me. My legs were becoming bulky and overly muscular. She was one of those teachers who could only work from the perspective of their own body type, and although her strength had made her an anomaly and a legend, it hadn’t made her a very good teacher. Her reputation was of no use to me. My pants were becoming tight on my thighs. I remember Kent, someone I was yet to meet, using the term thunder thighs. This turbulent honeymoon with Madame was over. It was worse than what I had left on the prairies.