White Swan, Black Swan: Stories

Bugaku I've got a heating pad on my knee, an ice pack on my ankle, and I'm smoking a cigarette, which I shouldn't be doing, but Ridley's making me nervous. He's dancing tonight, not me, but that's not what's on his mind. He wants to talk. He wants to talk about turning thirty last week in Chicago, about moving to a bigger apartment when we get back to New York after the tour, about buying furniture, or at least a sofa, about getting married, about having a baby. Even though I've been with Ridley for four years now, ever since I was fifteen, none of this has ever come up. Dancers don't do those kinds of things. You're at the studio by ten, home from the theater after midnight: there's no energy for anything else. And a baby? That's at least a year off, if you ever make it back. But I don't want to fight with Ridley: I wouldn't want him to fight with me two hours before my curtain. So right now, I'm smoking a cigarette and trying to ignore all this. "Don't answer me, Joanna," Ridley says from his side of the bed. "Try something new." He disappears into the bathroom, abandoning me to this hotel room: a triple bureau and a writing desk, two wide beds with obelisks for headboards, a wing chair. Maybe this is what got him started. Nothing wrong with a good hotel room. I just don't see why we have to have all this stuff at home. We pretty much live at the theater; our apartment is only a warehouse for laundry and mail. I put out my cigarette, which was actually from Ridley's pack we alternate, swearing off tobacco and go back to what I was doing before he came out of the shower: going through my theater trunk. I've got about thirty pairs of pointe shoes dumped all over the bed, some white, some pink, some with the shanks ripped out, some I've used for two ballets but still can't bear to part with. I find the white shoes I need for Bugaku tomorrow night, for my first really big role it's just me and Nilas out there on the stage for the whole adagio and then Ridley's out of the bathroom again. I creep over to the door with my white shoes and silently stick the tips of them into the doorjamb, crunch the door closed. I've got to break the shoes in. "Do you have to do that now?" Ridley says. I turn to look at him, shoes on my hands. Without saying another word, he gets his bag and then opens the door to the hall and slams it behind him. In about twenty minutes I'll go to the theater to watch him dance. . He's doing "Rubies," Eddie Villella's old role in Jewels. I'll be dancing Suzanne Farrell's role in "Diamonds" winter season back in New York. We're constantly replacing each other, but we never really own the roles. What Balanchine made for Farrell or Villella will always be theirs. To me Ridley looks like a young Eddie Villella, with that same robust energy and muscular attack. He's already on with Molly by the time I get to the wings in my leather jacket and twenty bracelets I keep expecting there will be cabs all over the streets in L.A. and I have to hold my hands over my forearms to keep the jangling muted as the two of them speed through the slapstick contortions that mark the opening movement. Molly has her hair wound into a cone that sits on her head like a pointed horn Ridley has to dodge, and her legs are astonishingly strong and knotted with muscles, almost the legs of a runner. But it's Ridley who does the running, peeling away from her for that wonderful, unexpected lap around the stage.Sharp, Adrienne is the author of 'White Swan, Black Swan: Stories' with ISBN 9780375504204 and ISBN 0375504206.