Corpse de Ballet (26 page)

LIGHTEN UP ON

THE DANCERS

OR ELSE

was all it said.

*   *   *

Juliet returned to Studio Three a bit late and found Ruth already at work again with the corps, trying to get them to dance out to music the steps she had walked them through earlier—slowly if necessary, but at least to dance, so that she could see the effect. The scene was the one that immediately followed Pip's discovery that his secret benefactor was the coarse convict, Magwitch, rather than the refined Miss Havisham. Ruth's idea was to make it a sort of nightmarish companion piece, a dark twin to the scene she had worked on yesterday in which Pip swirled excitedly between his low start in life and genteel society. She had worked on it with Patrick all through the weekend, as she had told Juliet, and she was introducing for the purpose a new lexicon of movement, a set of steps and gestures intended to be leering, looming, menacing, like figures distorted by a wavy funhouse mirror.

Juliet discovered her in the midst of a tense, but at least not insulting, address to the corps.

“Don't forget, you'll have lighting to help you,” she was saying, “so it won't look as bald as it might feel here. But I do need you to try to imagine yourselves as sinister figures, grotesques. Fingers re-ee-eally long and crooked, necks re-ee-eally stretched, backs ve-e-ry fluid, like you were moving against water, in water. Knees
bent.
Ankles
flexed.
Can you all do me a favor please and please bend your knees? Please.” She turned to the pianist. “Ray, very slowly, please. From the first measure. I'll give you four.
One
and
two
and
three
and
four
—”

The music began and the dancers, with no apparent difficulty, reproduced the long, intricate series of movements they had first been shown only an hour before. This time, the London characters and those from the Essex marshes wove in and out of each other's worlds, their groups mingling and reforming, oozing, almost, across the stage, their shoulders often hunched inward, their feet almost pigeon-toed. Pip, meanwhile, lay downstage across a trio of chairs standing in for his bed, eyes shut, body writhing as he struggled (thematically speaking) to wake. Parisi's music for this section was agitated and even more discordant than its earlier twin. Despite the fact that there was only the homely piano to represent all the instruments of the orchestra, Juliet thought the whole thing was pretty damned effective.

Ruth did not.

“Thank you,” she mumbled to the dancers as the music ended and they more or less collapsed, worn out by the unaccustomed motions and the effort of remembering and performing them all. “That was horrible. Not you,” she hastened to add, turning again to the panting dancers. “Me. Jesus God,” her voice suddenly rose to a howl, “those steps! For Chrissake, it looks like Bob Fosse!”

Literally beating herself on the head with her small, clenched fists, she looked up at the clock and found there were ten minutes left until the end of the session.

“Go,” she said to the dancers. “Save yourselves. You're young. Leave me here. Corps members, I'll see you tomorrow. Soloists and principals, come back at five.”

She sank to the floor, a bony, gray-haired wreck. As the corps members collected their things, she looked up again and called out, “You were wonderful, really. Thank you.”

Juliet noticed Victorine—as usual, erect at her post on a chair at the front of the room—nodding a sort of benison to the weary dancers. She reminded Juliet of a mother who wordlessly smiles understanding and sympathy at children who have just witnessed an upsetting outburst from Dad. Meanwhile, Patrick was warning off those departing dancers who thought they might try to comfort Ruth.

“It's better just to leave her,” Juliet heard him hiss to Hart, who seemed disposed to have a quick word with the crumpled choreographer. “Trust me.”

Patrick rolled his eyes and Hart moved on, flashing a comradely smile at Juliet herself as he went.

As for Juliet, eager as she was to discuss with Ruth the note she had found, she realized it would be better to take care of aesthetics first. She let her friend have a chance to drink some water, cool off, and collect herself a bit, then got her to sit down on a chair in the now empty studio. She drew a chair up opposite and sat with her knees almost touching Ruth's. Ruth had picked up one of the small oranges used for the Christmas dinner scene and was slowly peeling it.

“What about a pas de deux?” Juliet began.

“You mean, throw out the whole—” Ruth said, and stopped peeling.

“It's always seemed to me an obvious place for a pas de deux,” Juliet went on. “From the first time I read your synopsis. Pip and Magwitch, so different in their ideas and feelings about their relationship—talk about a companion piece to an earlier scene, think of their first meeting, how you can use that collision and that family of steps and gestures now! The music will fit perfectly and the scene—well, not to be rude, but I think it would carry the audience forward much better than any scene with the corps. Narratively, I mean.”

Ruth was silent for a few moments. In her head, Juliet guessed, she was replaying what she had created of Act Two, trying to see the flow of movement and how such a change would affect it.

She resumed peeling the orange. “So then when Drummle and Estella begin their waltz afterwards—”

“—you don't have to worry about getting the whole corps off the stage,” Juliet finished. (Ruth's synopsis, and Parisi's score, provided a waltz for Estella and her haughty fiancé, Bentley Drummle, with Miss Havisham a brooding third.)

Ruth considered this. “On the other hand, I do have to worry about getting them on somewhere. People expect the corps to be part of a ballet. They can't be on for just two minutes out of twenty.”

“That's why I think you need to include them in the waltz scene. Then it looks like a celebration and makes it clearer that Drummle and Estella are engaged.”

“More costumes mean more expense,” Ruth muttered. She had removed the whole peel now and sat with the scraps balanced on one knee while she thoughtfully detached an orange section. “Max won't like that.”

“Put ribbons and sashes on them, that's all. You don't imagine nineteenth-century English villagers kept formal evening wear, do you?”

“So the corps is on stage, and then—” Ruth put an orange section into her mouth.

“Pip appears, watches, maybe cuts in and has a little turn around the room with Estella. Then Drummle snaps her away, takes her offstage, the corps follows and Miss Havisham is alone—”

“—for her Remorse Solo,” Ruth took up. “End of Act Two. Oh God, maybe it would work.”

“I think it would.”

“It means Pip is dancing constantly for—I don't know, ten minutes maybe.”

“Give the bulk of the duet to Magwitch.”

“Ryder?” said Ruth doubtfully, the word muffled by another mouthful of orange.

“You don't think he can pull it off?”

“No. I mean yes, he probably could. He's actually very good.” She chewed and swallowed. “I wouldn't be surprised if he becomes a soloist next year. I think Greg has overlooked him. He has a lot of strengths.”

Mention of Ryder and strength reminded Juliet of the note on Ruth's desk upstairs. She was about to broach the topic when Ruth handed her both peels and orange and stood up as if in a trance. She went to the center of the room and began moving experimentally.

“Tah-tum! Tah-tah-tum!” she sang, or rather muttered, to herself, obviously starting to create a second Magwitch–Pip pas de deux. Juliet watched, hoping she would sit down after a minute or two.

Instead, “Find Patrick and get him in here, would you?” Ruth called out, not even slowing down.

Reluctant but resigned, Juliet tossed the remains of the orange into the wastebasket and left the studio. Patrick, she discovered after a little wandering about, was in the dancers' lounge, leaning against the same machine that had supplied Anton with the fatal Coke and drinking deeply from a bottle of lemonade.

“Her nibs is looking for you,” she said, and Patrick, groaning, went off. Juliet hesitated, then decided to sit in the lounge and have a break herself. The note on Ruth's desk would have to wait.

Chapter Fifteen

Juliet had read enough about gorillas to know that they did not reveal their secrets all at once.

Primatologists insinuated themselves among them and patiently watched for months before discerning the subtle hierarchies in their ranks. And so it was no surprise to find that she herself could now pick out groupings among the Jansch dancers that had been invisible to her on her first arrival.

In the dancers' lounge that Tuesday afternoon, Olympia Andreades was lying full length on a sofa, her head propped up against one arm, her long legs draped across the contiguous laps of Alexei Ostrovsky and Skip (or Kip) Whoever-he-was. The three seemed to be playing some sort of word game, like Geography, except that the words each contributed were the names of celebrities, not place names, and did not bear any orthographic relationship to each other that Juliet could discern. Across the way, Lily Bediant and Teri Malone shared an oversized armchair, Teri massaging Lily's upper arms for her while they whispered to each other, smiling occasionally as if at an interesting secret. Hart and Elektra also sat side by side, on a sofa under the windows. As Juliet watched, Hart fed his partner from a box of raisins—one raisin, a second raisin, a third—each leaving his delicate fingers singly and disappearing as it was nibbled in by her equally delicate lips. Framed and glowingly backlit as the two were by the window behind them, each raisin (thought Juliet) could almost be traced as it reappeared, a nearly visible lumplet passing along the ballerina's slender neck. The very sight of such gastronomical restraint made her yearn for a cheeseburger to sink her teeth into, a cheeseburger dripping blood onto a plate of fries. Then Elektra suddenly raised her hands and lowered her head. She sneezed mightily, twice. Juliet had forgotten the poor woman had a cold; what on earth could she even taste of those pitiful, lingeringly ingested ex-grapes?

In her early days at the Jansch, Juliet remarked to herself as she looked away to survey the other dozen or so dancers in the lounge, all she would have been able to make of these groupings was that, by and large, the principals kept to themselves, the corps and soloists likewise. Nicky Sabatino and Jon Trapp, a longtime principal who was to star in
Blood Wedding
this season, sat at a table in the middle of the room arguing vehemently about the Yankees' chances for the World Series. At another table, four corps members shared a vending-machine-sized package of pretzels as they collaborated on a crossword puzzle. Such a pairing as Lily and Teri, still buzzing softly in their armchair, was most unusual, and even in the early days, Juliet would no doubt have solemnly recorded the aberration in her field notes for later study.

But she now understood that other groups existed within (and sometimes traversed) the basic tripartite hierarchy. One clan of dancers was … racier, was the word that came to mind, than the others. They laughed louder, teased each other more harshly, and gave an impression of wildness that the others did not. Olympia and Ryder were of this set, which Juliet suspected also indulged in drugs. Another subgroup was pursuing second careers that would take them away from dance. You rarely saw a dancer reading a book for pleasure, but there was a coterie that could be glimpsed in the lounge dutifully highlighting lines in a psychology or physiology text. There were cults who gathered around particular dancers, devotees of a specific principal or pair. There were dancers who hardly socialized within the company—not very many, but a few. Some dancers drew together because they all had children. Russians stuck mainly with Russians; Latino and Asian dancers were more dispersed. (There was only one African-American dancer, even in this day and age, who could therefore neither cluster nor disperse.) Some dancers sucked up to the administrators more (or more blatantly, or more successfully) than others. A few were trying to choreograph new works, hoping the Jansch would allow them to create something on the company one day.

And there were romances: gay romances, straight romances, overt romances, surreptitious romances. The only rule of thumb Juliet had discovered in this realm was that open physical contact between dancers was no indication of sexual attachment. Unlike most human beings, dancers stroked and rubbed and grabbed and nuzzled and jumped on one another all day long without intending anything either as an overture or a claim. She wondered what sort of extreme explicitness would be necessary, in the circumstances, to signal sexual interest. Perhaps they put it in writing? Or waited until they were actually in bed together before concluding this was sex? On the other hand, there might be layers and layers of communication among them (glances? gestures? moans?) that she had not yet learned to distinguish. Whatever it was, she did not think it could be scent. Much of the time, they reeked either of sweat (each perspiring his or her own unique, quite identifiable smell, she had noticed) or force-ten perfumes.

Juliet's musings were interrupted, like many a primatologist's, no doubt, by a sudden, mass movement of the subjects of her study. As if at an inaudible signal (eventually, she realized it was the large wall clock pointing at one minute before five) nearly all the dancers rose to their feet and headed down the stairs in a body.

Later, she was to think with astonishment of what had taken place right before her eyes.

*   *   *

The most obviously dramatic event of the afternoon occurred just after 6:30, down in Studio Three, where Ruth was working on a second Pip–Estella–Havisham pas de trois—dubbed the “Love Her, Love Her” trio, after Miss Havisham's orders to Pip—that came midway through Act Two. Ruth would have preferred to work on the new Pip–Magwitch pas de deux—soon to be known as the Recognition Duet—but she had not requested the Magwitches, and she did have her Estellas and Havishams, so she was forced to stick to her original plans.