Gabriella Brand

Syncopation Literary Journal normally publishes work about music and musicians, but they devoted their current issue to stories, essays and poetry about dance. I am delighted they chose to publish my short memory piece “Airborne“. It’s about my experiences as a wannabee dancer.

https://syncopationliteraryjournal.wordpress.com/volume-2-issue-3/

AIRBORNE

It was Daddy who arranged for the lessons. With Madame Sylvie, known to be the best in town.  I was not quite five and still a little uncertain when it came to distinguishing my left foot from my right.  But Daddy said he would love to have a danseuse for a daughter. Could I be that daughter?

Right from the beginning I embraced everything about ballet class. The rituals and the accoutrements. I liked the soft case in which I carried my little black slippers and the stretchy tights. Sometimes, for recitals, there was even a tutu, all gauzy floof and twirl. I wasn’t crazy about the warm-ups at the barre, the contorted positions of the feet, but I couldn’t wait to learn the pliés, jetés, and arabesques. My favorite movement soon became the cabriole. I was a tree climber by nature and I liked feeling a bit airborne. 

I particularly loved the mirrors in the practice room. A line of little girls stretching their necks forward like delicate swans. If you allowed yourself a peek at the reflections, before Madame Sylvie caught you and pounced on you with a strict  “Eyes Front” decree….you would swear that the gaggle of cygnets would take flight and flutter down the mirror as if they were on a lake.

Was I talented?  No. I was often half a measure behind the others, and probably not that graceful. But I was small-boned and light of foot and flexible. Most of all I was highly motivated. Year after year, I vowed to become the dancer I thought Daddy wanted.  Daddy, himself, played the violin, and he knew many musicians, dancers, and performers so the role models were easy to imagine.

In early adolescence, though, when my hips started to widen and I gained no height, I realized that I would would never have the body of a classical ballerina. The only thing to do was to keep working on my skills. After all, I assumed Daddy expected me to dance as  Clara, the star of The Nutcracker, not just a small gray mouse scuffing across the stage. I would somehow be a real ballerina, with a chignon, and eventually, toe shoes.

Ah, toe shoes. The sign of a mature dancer. I remember, when I was around eleven, sticking my bare toes, for the first time, into a little rabbit fur nest that protected the foot from the hard wooden block at the tip of the shoe. Then I eased the rest of my foot into the narrow slipper, Cinderella-like. And finally, I took the long – impossibly long – pink satin ribbons and criss-crossed them over the tops of my feet to secure the shoes in place, as if I, myself, were a birthday present beautifully wrapped and beribboned.

Oh, the magic of going ‘en pointe”. Suddenly I was ten inches taller.  What a glorious change from my regular sneakers and loafers and other pedestrian shoes. Suddenly, wearing those beautiful satin stilts, I became a graceful flamingo, rosy toed and long of leg.

At first, I could hardly take them off. I wore them to practice, of course, but then I wore them at home. Once Daddy made a home movie of me as I did a spirited cabriole and more or less fell onto the sofa.

I was sure that I was winning Daddy’s approval.

But then, not too long after I went ‘en pointe”, the magic disappeared.

I was not quite thirteen.

A ballet expert had come to join Madame Sylvie in her provincial ballet studio. This authority was from Moscow or Paris or some well-respected place where classical dance thrived.

She was inspecting our bare feet.

“This one has a Greek foot,” said Madame Authority, pointing at me.

That’s impossible, I thought. I’m not Greek.

“Your second toe is longer than your first,” explained Madame Sylvie.

I looked down at my toes. They looked fine to me. Like they had always looked.

Madame Authority and Madame Sylvie went into a huddle. I knew they were deciding whether I could continue going on toe or not.

I could not.

That was the decision and it was final, and they assured me that I’d thank them eventually for not destroying my feet or my posture or something like that.

The magic of ballet poofed away as if someone had taken a pin to a balloon.

My first reaction was anger. Stupid ballet. Stupid rule. Stupid Madame. Stupid toes.

And then my second reaction was a kind of sour grapes. Who wants to look like a swan, anyway? I thought.  And pink shoes are rather pathetic, like confectionary rosebuds on a birthday cake. They look pretty but they’re much too sweet.

But how could I break the news to my father?

I remember coming home in a daze. I expected Daddy to look at me with profound disappointment and maybe even disgust for my deformed feet.

But he didn’t. Not at all. He assured me that he didn’t have “a dog in the race”, which I understood to mean that he just wanted to see me happy and pursuing things I loved, and he actually didn’t have his heart set on seeing me on stage as the next Margot Fonteyn.

And he knew all about Greek feet. “There’s nothing wrong with them,” he said.”All the classical statues have second toes longer than the first. Even the Statue of Liberty has a Greek foot.”

He showed me an art book with the Venus de Milo. That girl couldn’t have gone en pointe either.

Daddy assured me that he didn’t care if I took up wrestling or needlepoint. I didn’t have to dance at all, if I didn’t want to. He had never meant to force me into it.

“But I’ve grown to love dancing,” I said, “And now I feel like a loser.”

Wisely, he let me wallow for a little while. Then he made a suggestion.

“You know, there’s another form of dance you might enjoy. It’s called Modern Dance.”

These days when people talk about body-shaming and body positivity, I often think back to my father, and the way in which he helped me navigate my disappointment. I emerged from that experience feeling a healthy respect for physical differences, mine or other people’s.

I did modern dance as a hobby for a long time, even after I finished university. I was never super gifted, but I loved it. Who needed beribboned toe shoes?  I could move freely across the slick wooden floor, barefoot, sometimes twirling a colorful long scarf over my head. Once I even danced with a long roll of toilet paper, as avant-garde and liberated  as they come. A bird without a cage.

I liked the long scarves….they were much, much longer than those pink ribbons on the toe shoes and no one gave a Greek fig about the length of my toes.

https://syncopationliteraryjournal.wordpress.com/volume-2-issue-3/