The Turnout(38)

It was, she told them, the greatest feeling of my life.

It will be, she told them, for you too.



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When Dara achieved her turnout at age ten years, six months, she saw the same stars. It was a feeling she recognized from her own furtive confusions, in the claw-foot bathtub, under her bunkbed blankets, her hands tingling, her thighs gaping like a keyhole, and that feeling after, like her whole fist would not be enough.



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It’s the dancer’s body opening itself to the audience, their mother always told them.

Giving them everything.

The moment you achieve it, you’ve become a dancer. You’ve become a woman.





BRAZEN


The bruise was very high up Marie’s inner thigh, ringlet-shaped, florid, a cherry bursting.

Dara was trying to lead Corbin Lesterio and Oliver Perez, her Nutcracker Prince and the Mouse King, through their epic swordfight, the climactic clash in the first act.

But there was a visitor lurking in the doorway. And this time it wasn’t Derek. Inexplicably, it was Marie, her bright new hair like a queen’s crown, you could not miss her. Nor could you miss the monstrous bruise on the inside of her thigh. Standing there with one leg turned out, flashing it like a hooker flashing her garter.

“It appears we have a surprise guest,” Dara said tightly. “Or a Peeping Tom.”

Marie took this as an invitation, strolling in, still panting a little from leading her four-year-olds, sweat wreathed beneath her breasts.

The purple neck marks from the week before had grown yellow, a sticky highlighter across her collarbones. But now there was this, fresh. On her thigh. Open. Impossible to miss.

Corbin looked away discreetly, but Oliver seemed rapt, his sword falling to his side.

“Let’s start from the top,” Dara said, drawing the boys’ roaming eyes back to her.

Marie watched for a few moments, Corbin and Oliver circling each other, their arms lifted, then swooping, all leading up to Corbin’s double saut de basque before landing the death blow.

“You know what?” Marie interjected suddenly. Corbin and Oliver looked at her, alarmed. No one ever spoke in Dara’s studio but Dara. “I think the change could be faster. Like this.”

And Dara watched as Marie moved toward Corbin and Oliver and reached out to position Oliver’s arm. Making a correction to Corbin’s hip.

Unlike Dara, Marie always touched her students, but Marie’s students were all little girls. Yet Marie, now, had one hand on each of their narrow hips. Get up on your legs. Don’t sink those hips on me. Her hands like tiny white moths fluttering around them both. Their hard bodies, their stiff energy. The boys red-faced, eager.

Dara watched.

Oliver pressing Corbin, Corbin swaying backward before pitching forward, coming back stronger, the force of his body, the swoop of it, straight into his turns.

Marie’s change made it more dynamic. Marie’s change felt frenetic, surprising. When Oliver lunged, the sword tip pressed against the hollow in Corbin’s neck, Dara felt herself gasp.

She was remembering that Sword Swallower they used to see at the carnival as children. How she crossed two swords down her throat at the same time. Her head thrown back, her throat like an elegant vase, the swords’ round handles like bright flowers blooming forth. Dara covering her eyes, while beside her Marie kept saying, Look! Look!

The boys finished, breathless, looking over to Dara for approval.

“Well, then. We must set Mademoiselle Durant free,” Dara said, walking past Marie. “She’s done enough.”



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    Do you want me coming in your studio?” Dara asked later. “Do you want me to advise your little moppets on how to play Candy Canes, to do cartwheels?”

But Marie didn’t say anything, cross-legged on her studio floor, licking her finger and turning the pages of some kind of flashy brochure.

“What is that?” Dara asked.

Marie spread open the brochure like a centerfold, revealing an array of cars shiny as candy wrappers gliding across a great expanse, a desert, or climbing up a grand terrain. Everest. “Luxury in motion,” it read.

“Why are you looking at cars?”

Marie shrugged maddeningly, her eyes on the shiny pages, fingers digging into that silky silvery hair of hers.

Behind them, the drill started up again in Studio B, the floors shaking suddenly.

Dara covered her ears, hopelessly.

Marie looked up and smiled at her, like she was the crazy one.



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I’m trying, Madame Durant. I swear.”

They were rehearsing a hallowed moment in their Nutcracker when Clara slowly, beautifully, goes into an arabesque, standing on one leg, the other extended behind her in a perfect line, as she lifts the Nutcracker doll—or, for now, a paper towel roll because Dara couldn’t find the prop—like a torch. It’s the moment in which, in some way, she gives herself over to the Nutcracker, this funny little man with his funny big teeth who will become her prince.

If a dancer hasn’t mastered her turnout, there’s no hiding it in the arabesque en pointe.

And Bailey Bloom was flailing. All the Level IVs tittering behind their hands. Her balancé was somehow both wobbly and tense, her body keeling backward.