The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(112)
Dare: You flossed? I didn’t floss for a year.
Alto: Post Traumatic Floss Disorder … [Laughter]
Jones: Despite their joking, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, was no laughing matter. For many of those in the theater on April 19th, the psychological wounds of the ordeal took longer to heal than the physical ones.
Bianco: Oh, I was a mess.
Jones: Wrapped in a black shawl, Daisy Bianco sits in one of the orchestra seats. She’s joined by John Quillis, who is also performing at tomorrow’s ceremony. He was a sophomore in 1992, and watched the shootings from the stage right wing. He and Daisy were good friends at school, and then started dating a few years after graduation.
John Quillis: I ran into her randomly in New York. We were both going to a master class or something. I didn’t recognize her at first.
Bianco: I looked like crap. I think I weighed 90 pounds.
Quillis: If that. I knew right away she was still haunted by it all. I think I knew because… Well, look, I’m the son of two psychologists. They had me immediately in therapy after the shooting. I think I was one of the few who went to counseling.
Bianco: You were.
Quillis: But even so, it was a long process. When I met up with Daisy I was coming out the other side. She looked like she was just heading into the tunnel.
Bianco: Avoiding the tunnel. I knew I was mentally unraveling after the shooting, but having the goal of physical recovery kept me slightly distracted. Not to say the physical injuries weren’t devastating.
Quillis: Her scars are crazy.
Bianco: Being shot nearly destroyed me. Destroyed the essence of me. I’m a dancer. This is all I’ve done, all I’ve been since I was five. And then I wake up in a hospital bed with my leg shot up and sliced open and I had no idea what had happened. The randomness, the senselessness of it… I truly became two people afterward. There was the me who worked like hell, trained and fought and never looked back. And then there was this other me who was just…dark. Angry and depressed and constantly anxious. Things I had never been before. Feelings I had never entertained, let alone been consumed by. I didn’t know how to express them. A lot of times I didn’t even have words for what I was experiencing.
Jones: What got you through it?
Bianco: I don’t…
Quillis: Take your time. You all right?
Bianco: John was the one who got me into therapy and got me on track to…back to myself, I guess. I got through it.
Quillis: It’s all right.
Bianco: I got through it but I don’t think I ever got over it. I can’t… I lost things I’ll never get back… Sorry, this is hard. It’s… In a lot of ways I’m still two people. Part of me has moved on and evolved yet part of me is still haunted. The shooting changed me. It changed who I was and for a long time I didn’t like…her.
Quillis: It’s all right. Come on, let’s take a break. Get some water.
Jones: Quillis comforts Bianco, leading her down by the side of the stage where they stretch together. They are in their thirties now. Quillis is a principal dancer with the Boston Ballet. Daisy Bianco danced two years with the Pennsylvania Ballet. She did a season with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York City and then went on tour with The Phantom of the Opera, in the role of Meg Giry. In 1999 she received an invitation from her former partner, Will Kaeger, to join the ballet company he was now heading in his home city of Saint John, New Brunswick.
Bianco: Once he was my partner, now he’s my boss.
Kaeger: We are always partners. I don’t dance with anyone the way I dance with Dais. Right from the start, when we were put together her freshman year, we had something special. It’s hard to explain. She’s calm, poised and cerebral. I’m an impulsive lunatic. But somehow those two things meshed into…us.
Bianco: We always partnered by pure instinct. So it was frustrating after the shooting. We had to relearn so much because of our injuries. All this thinking was required.
Kaeger: But we partner now in totally unique ways, and those came out of our injuries. But you’re right, I remember the first time we went into supported adagio class after the shooting. I didn’t think two fingers were going to make much of a difference but it was a disaster.
Bianco: We left in tears.
Kaeger: Tears. I’d lost sensation in this hand so I couldn’t hold onto her, couldn’t feel her weight when I was lifting her. We were falling all over the place, it was really discouraging. I was actually really freaked out by it. But little by little it became instinctive again. Dais knew how to work around my bad hand and I knew how she was going to compensate for her leg. This whole other dimension of our partnership emerged. And we had the bond of experience, too.
Bianco: War mates.
Jones: Apart from the emotional memories, was it difficult to stage this piece after not performing together for so long?
Kaeger: No. Piece of cake. I can partner her in my sleep.
Bianco: And I love this pas de deux so much.
Kaeger: It’s from the George Balanchine ballet Who Cares? set to the song “The Man I Love.” I’ve never danced it anywhere but this theater. And never with anyone but Dais.
Bianco: I’m grateful the music holds no memory of the shooting for me. I can hear it and not be reminded.
Kaeger: It reminds me of Marie though.
Bianco: It does. Her death was a bitter loss to the conservatory. In the aftermath of the shooting and trying to recover and come back and dance again, it was devastating not having her. Something was just missing from this building. I never stopped looking for her. I’m looking for her right now, yelling notes from the orchestra.