Sari Wilson - Girl Through Glass

During class, right before center, Ms. Clement stops the girls. She lifts the needle off the record. “Mira, come here.” Mira walks out to the center of the room with her feet turned out. Standing in a first position, she brushes her right leg out along the floor. “Notice,” Ms. Clement says, “the turnout begins at the hips, not at the knee.” Mira extends her leg, lifts her chin, and makes her face blank. As blank as a desert. She has learned how to do this so that the others will not have something for their hate to attach itself to (for this is the third time this week she has been called to demonstrate).

They all move into the center. The first center combination is allegro —a series of glissades, a pas de bourrée , changement, and soutenu . Mira is quick, birdlike. Her feet obey her mind exactly, beating the air with the sure strokes of wings.

She has never felt her power so cleanly or decisively.

The next Saturday when Mira leaves rehearsal, Maurice is waiting for her outside The Little Kirov. He’s bundled in a fur coat. He invites her to the Russian Tea Room. Despite its proximity to the dance studio, Mira has never been to the Russian Tea Room. She has only seen it in movies.

He walks her around the corner and right through wooden doors festooned with lights. They sit in a puffy red booth. On the forest-green walls hang gold-framed paintings of jesters, clowns, and little girls. The room is a patchwork of colors and sounds: busy waiters wheeling clanking tea carts maneuver around a gold centerpiece clock whose wide, cheery face clicks and bongs. Beside their table is a giant silver pitcher with a spigot, which Maurice tells her is called a samovar. From it comes hot tea. Today Maurice wears all blue — dark blue trousers, a light blue sweater, and a red ascot. In this new guise, he reminds her of Jacques Cousteau. She is getting used to the fact that he appears in a different guise each time she sees him.

It is barely more than two weeks since their first meeting, but she already feels she’s known him forever. When their cups are filled with the hot liquid from the samovar, he raises his glass and says, “ Nazdrovia! ” She tentatively lifts hers and he clinks his glass to hers. He smiles and points at the wooden dolls lined up on a shelf across the room. “This place is a hundred percent Russian. With a little kitsch. But who says kitsch isn’t Russian? They are really quite art brut. ”

She nods. For once she knows what he is talking about. Her grandmother had given her a Russian nesting doll for her tenth birthday. The dolls painted on oblong wooden eggs. The women get smaller as the eggs get smaller. Each woman rests inside another woman until the last tiny woman stands there wobbling on the table.

Maurice waves a waiter over and orders some things Mira can’t pronounce. Then he smiles at her. The noises — the laughter, the tinkling silverware, the clatter of food carts — grow louder as she looks at him, her eyes burning.

“They used to be my friends.”

“Who?”

“Val. And the other girls—”

He laughs. “They’re not destined for greatness as you are.”

Her eyes are filling up again. The room is collapsing into blurry shapes and streaks of light. She hasn’t been able to get the girls out of her mind. “They whisper.”

“Enough,” he says. “Mira, I want to tell you a story. Imagine, dear, before electrical lights. No spotlights, no disco balls. This is how the first ballerinas danced — in theaters lit by gaslights, close to the fire. Now, these early ballerinas would sometimes get a little too far downstage, too close to the lamps, and their fragile tutus, which were longer in those days than they are now, well — they would catch fire, go up, poof ! The ballerina engulfed in flames! Many ballerinas died this way. But they didn’t stop the show. Poor Clara Webster burned in front of the audience and they carried her off and the show went on.

“One night a dancer named Rostova was performing Swan Lake —there it was, the fire. In the mirror, she saw her own wings in flames but rushed out onstage right on cue. Siegfried, without missing a beat, grabbed a blanket from backstage, pas de bourréed over to her and wrapped her in that blanket. He had second-degree burns on his hands from trying to tamp out the worst of the flames. But they were onstage for the next act, Siegfried doing lifts with a bandaged hand. And Rostova danced the rest of the evening beautifully.”

Mira’s head throbs.

“The audience, interviewed afterward, said that they thought the fire was part of the performance. The audience only knows what it is told.”

He looks at her, his black eyes boring into her. “Now these girls. They are like your fire.” She makes herself meet his eyes. “Mira, you must learn to dance with the fire.”

There is a din inside her head that matches the one in the room. She looks around the room: everything glitters strangely. It’s too bright, like a dollhouse come to life. She feels like she’s seeing it all for the first time.

Suddenly, her gloom lifts.

A bow-tied waiter places a bowl of soup before her. It is a deep purple red, hot and salty, with bits of something like earth floating in it. Beneath the earth and salt, the tangy silver of the spoon. Then a plate of folded pancakes arrives on their table. A number of small dishes accompany them — sour cream, apples, jam. Her mouth waters at the tastes on display. She tries each one in succession — she has always been a good eater, with a taste for sweet and salty, sour and bitter.

Then Maurice leans over to her and whispers in her ear, “My dear, do you see that man over there?” Mira looks at the corner where Maurice is pointing and she sees an older man — a man with white hair and the small wizened face of a turtle — gazing at a young girl sitting across from him.

“That, my dear, is the great Balanchine.”

There’s not a girl who dances in New York City who doesn’t know about Balanchine — Mr. B. He is synonymous with the great and the rare. He is father of the “pinhead ballerina”—that new variety — the waif with the strength of an ox. But to Mira, he is a confusing figure, more shadowy than the stars he has produced, more mysterious than Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova, the show-stoppers of ABT.

The great Balanchine wipes his mouth heartily. His twinkling eyes scan the room. They rest on her for a second before they continue on. Mira’s eyes shift to the girl next to him. She sits with her hands in her lap, looking down. From her small ears hang strands of diamonds. When the girl looks up again, Mira sees that she’s not a girl but a woman .

Balanchine and the young-but-old woman gather their things. They don’t have much — he has no coat and she has only a tiny gold-clasped purse that hangs from one long-fingered hand. She puts her other arm through Balanchine’s. Her eyes are trinkets — wide and bright. She doesn’t smile. He steers her among the tables of the room as he makes his way toward their table. Then he and the glittering waif stand before them.

Balanchine nods at Maurice and turns to Mira. His eyes are small and almond shaped, and through his skin you can see the bones of his skull. His eyes crinkle as he takes her in.

“Is she one of mine?” he says.

“No,” Maurice answers. “Not yet.”

“Ah,” he says.

“Her name is Mirabelle.”

Mr. B nods. The woman blinks her startled eyes. They turn and make their way toward the door.