Danielle Steel: Granny Dan

And in the morning, they woke her at five o'clock with the others, and gave her her first leotard and ballet shoes. They ate breakfast every morning at five-thirty, and by six o'clock they were in their classrooms, warming up. And by lunchtime, she was one of them. Madame Markova had come to check on her several times, and watched her in her classes each day. She wanted to keep a close eye on her formation, and make sure that she was learning properly before she even began to dance. She saw immediately that the little bird that had flown to them from Moscow was a remarkably graceful child with the perfect body for a dancer. She was perfect for the life her father had chosen for her. And it was clear to Madame Markova, and her other teachers, in a short time, that destiny had brought her here. Danina Petroskova had been born to be a dancer.

As Madame Markova had promised from the first, Danina's life was one of rigor, backbreaking hard work, and sacrifices that demanded more from her each day than she thought possible. But in the first three years she was there, she never wavered or faltered in her determination. She was ten by then, and lived only to dance, and strove constantly for perfection. Her days were fourteen hours long, spent almost entirely in classes. She was tireless, always determined to surpass what she had previously learned. Madame Markova was well pleased with her, as she told Danina's father whenever she saw him. He came to see Danina several times a year, and was always pleased with what he saw of her dancing, as were her teachers.

When he came to see her first major performance on the stage, when she was fourteen, she danced the role of the girl who dances the mazurka with Franz in Coppelia. She was a full member of the troupe by then, and no longer merely a student, which pleased her father greatly. It was a beautiful performance, and Danina was breathtaking in her precision, elegance of style, and the sheer power of her talent. There were tears in her father's eyes when he saw her, and in hers when she saw him backstage after the performance. It was the most exciting night of her life, and all she wanted to do was thank him for bringing her here seven years before. She had lived at the ballet for half her life now, it was the only life she knew, the only one she wanted.

She danced the role of the Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty a year later, and at sixteen, she gave a miraculous performance in La Bayadere. At seventeen, she was a prima and performed so breathtakingly in Swan Lake that no one who saw her could forget it. Madame Markova knew that she lacked maturity in some ways, she had seen so little of the world, knew nothing of life, yet her technique and her style were so extraordinary that they took one's breath away, and put her far above the others.

The Czarina was well aware of her by then, as were her daughters. And at nineteen, Danina danced at a private performance for the Czar at the Winter Palace. It was April 1914. In May, she was invited to dance for them at their villa on the Peterhof estate, and dined with the family in their private quarters, with Madame Markova and several stars of the ballet in attendance. It was a treat for her, beyond any she had known, and a tribute that meant more to her than any other. To be recognized by the Czar and Czarina was the ultimate accolade, the only tribute she had truly longed for, and she put a photograph of them in a small frame next to her bed. She had particularly liked meeting Grand Duchess Olga, as she was only a few months younger than Danina. And Danina was enchanted by the Czarevitch, who was only nine then, but he thought Danina was very pretty, as did everyone who saw her.

As she matured, Danina had a rare graceful quality, a sense of gentleness and poise, a bit of mischief, and a lovely sense of humor. It was not surprising that the Czarevitch loved her. He was delicate, and had been ill throughout his childhood. But despite his fragility, she teased him and treated him normally, and he loved it. He was a particularly wise, soulful child, and spoke longingly of what she did. She seemed so strong to him, so healthy.

Danina promised to let Alexei watch her in class one day, if Madame Markova would let them, but she couldn't imagine Madame Markova saying no to such an important visitor, if his health would permit it, and his doctors. Because of his hemophilia there was always one of two physicians hovering near, making sure no accident befell him. Danina felt sorry for him, he seemed so ill, and so intolerably frail, and yet there was something warm and kind and very loving about him. And the Czarina was very touched when she saw how kind Danina was to him.

As a result, that summer, Madame Markova received an invitation from the Czarina to come to stay at Livadia for a week, their summer palace in the Crimea, and to bring Danina with her. It was an enormous honor, but even then, Danina was reluctant to do it. She couldn't bear the thought of abandoning her classes and rehearsals for seven days. She was conscientious to the point of being driven. Hers was a rigid, grueling, brutally demanding monastic life, which required everything of her. She gave it everything she had, everything she could, all she dared, and she had long since far exceeded even Madame Markova's wildest dreams for her. It took Madame Markova nearly a month to convince her to accept the Imperial invitation, and only then because the ballet mistress convinced her that it would be an affront to the Czarina if she didn't.

It was the only vacation she had ever had, the only time in her life, since the age of seven, when she hadn't been dancing, when she didn't begin each day with warm-ups at five, classes at six, and rehearsals by eleven, when she didn't push her body for fourteen hours a day to its outer limits. At Livadia, in July, it was the first time in her life that she dared to play, and in spite of herself, she loved it.

Danina seemed almost childlike to Madame Markova as she watched her. She played with the Czar's daughters in the sea, cavorted with them, laughing and splashing, and was always gentle with Alexei. She had a motherly touch with him, which touched his mother's heart deeply. And all of the children were startled to realize that Danina didn't know how to swim. With all her discipline and the agonizingly stern life she led, she had never had time to learn anything but dancing.

It was on her fifth day there that Alexei fell ill again, after a small bump he had gotten on his leg while leaving the dinner table, and he was confined to his bed for the next two days. Danina sat with him, telling him stories she remembered from her childhood with her father and brothers, and endless tales of the ballet, the rigorous discipline, and the other dancers. He listened to her for hours, until he fell asleep holding her hand, and she tiptoed slowly away to rejoin the others. She felt so sorry for him, and the cruel limitations his illness imposed on him. He was so unlike her own brothers, or the boys she had trained with at the ballet, who were all so powerful and so healthy.

Alexei was still weak but feeling better when she and Madame Markova left in mid-July, and boarded the Imperial train to return to St. Petersburg. It had been a wonderful vacation, and an unforgettable time in her life that she knew she would remember forever. She would never forget playing with the Imperial family like ordinary friends, and the beauty of the setting, and Alexei trying to teach her to swim, while explaining it to her from a deck chair.

“No, not like that, you silly girl … like this….” He demonstrated the strokes with his arms, while she tried to implement them, and then they both laughed hysterically when she failed and pretended to be drowning.

He wrote to her once at the ballet, a little note, telling her that he missed her. It was obvious that although he was only nine, he had a crush on her. His mother acknowledged it to a friend, with genteel amusement. Alexei was having his first affair with a ballet dancer, at nine, and she was a beauty. But better than that, they knew she was a lovely person. But two weeks after her idyllic stay in Livadia, the entire world was in turmoil, and the sad events in Sarajevo had finally catapulted them into war. And on August first, Germany declared war on Russia. No one thought it would last long, and optimistically assumed the hostilities would end at the Battle of Tannenberg at the end of August, but instead the situation worsened.