by Lisa Rosenberg

Created on: March 23, 2010

From The Looking Glass

I am living someone else’s dream.  No, I am living the dream of my former self.  What is this place?  Who is this man - really this boy - I am with?  Whose steps are these I’m dancing?

I have always wanted to be one of the four cygnets in Swan Lake; now I am one.  I’ve always wanted to dance the Ballanchine masterpieces: Concerto Baroco, Agon; Four “T”s.  Now I have.  But it’s not me dancing; I’m standing outside myself watching and wondering how and why.    

They’ve begun to offer us Pilates at eight each morning before company class.  It’s optional but recommended.  Though most of the other girls in the corps de ballet take advantage, I don’t even consider it; they’re lucky I make it to company class.  And when I show up, I’m in black - leotard, tights, chiffon skirt, legwarmers - though the women in this company favor color: feminine pastels, jewel-tone velvets, floral prints. These days, I can’t even be bothered to sew new pointe shoes until the old ones are worn to shreds, far beyond function.  

To be fair, there are certain sections of certain ballets that I still get a charge out of dancing, like the opening in Who Cares?, where the music’s all Gershwin, and you get to whack your legs up in the air and flick your wrists and jut out your hips.  Or the part in Swan Lake Act II, after the swans’ entrance: where you tear around the stage, flapping your arms like a maniac and then freeze-stop on a dime when the prince comes. 

I’ll be so into it, remembering at last why I do this in the first place and then, after a performance, I’ll get “notes” - the director’s list of everything I did wrong during the show.  (Everyone gets notes, but lately I get more than average.)  And you know what I find myself thinking?  I’m having a great time out there (not counting the pain) if you don’t like my dancing, watch someone else.

So I know it’s time to stop.  To become that other me, who went to a fancy Ivy League University and then lied about it, so people would believe I was only nineteen and consider me for their corps de ballet.  Before I left for school, my ballet teachers had begged me:  “Dance now!  College will wait!”   I should have listened.  Princeton

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