Page 74 of The Lost Heiress
The other week, Madame Petrov had told them about the ballet rivals, Sallé and Camargo.
“Men used to be the stars of ballet, not women,” Madame Petrov had said. “Yes, it is true. Women used to wear high heels while they were dancing—can you imagine?—and these full hoopskirts that reached all the way to the floor. They couldn’t do any of the flashy techniques the men did—and even if they had been able to do them in those heels, those heavy skirts would have hidden them. But Sallé and Camargo—they cut off their heels, they let down their hair, they shortened their skirts. While performing the role of Galatea inPygmalion, Sallé wore nothing more than a flimsy muslin tunic. Can you imagine? And Camargo was the first to perform the entrechat quatre and the cabriole, which before only men had done. Now when you do a cabriole, think of Camargo, and I bet you dance it differently.”
Mary leaned toward Astrid, holding the photograph in her hand. “Did you see?” she asked.
Astrid took it. It was a photograph of a young dancer, posed en pointe. Her back was to the photographer in the shot, but she’d half twisted her body around to face the camera. It was staged in the forest, and the dancer was pale and wearing a long white tulle skirt.
“It’s Madame Petrov. From her time in the Imperial Ballet in Russia,” Mary said. “When she danced the role of Myrtha inGiselle. I found it in the library.”
The photograph was yellowing, and the edges were rough. Mary must have ripped it from an old newspaper.
“It’s lovely,” Astrid said.
In the photograph, Madame Petrov was younger than Astrid was now. Her hair was dark and full and piled on top of her head. And in her eyes, Florence thought she saw what Madame Petrov meant every time she told Astrid to lift herself.
“Do you think Madame Petrov will be pleased?” Mary asked. “I was going to give it to her after class. Perhaps she could frame it and keep it on her dressing table?”
Mary was always bringing Madame Petrov presents—flowers and fresh fruit—even though Mary lived by herself in a one-room studio and had only two practice skirts (one taupe, one faded gray), which she washed herself in her sink and hung out the window each night to dry. Madame Petrov had hired her to play the piano during afternoon lessons and let her use the studio for free in her spare time. “Poor Mary,” Astrid was always saying. “Poor, poor Mary.”
“She’ll love it,” Astrid said, handing her back the photograph. But when Mary turned away, Astrid whispered to Florence, “If it were me, I would hate Mary for reminding me that once I was young and beautiful.”
“Levez-vous! Levez-vous!” Madame Petrov said. Florence looked up to see Madame Petrov entering the studio, dressed head to toe in heavy black chiffon, as she always was, as if she were in mourning. Her salted hair was gathered into a chignon on the top of her head, and her skin caught in rivulets at the creases of her eyes, her mouth. She was stockier here than in her photo, her waist thick, her shoulders stooped.
“Il faut casser le noyau pour en avoir l’amande,” she said, and everyone rose from the floor to take their places at the barre.
In Astrid’s first lesson with Madame Petrov, Astrid had told her about Svetlana Beriosova, aboutGiselle.
“I must learn to do that,” Astrid said.
“You are too old,” Madame Petrov said. “Why did you come to me so late?”
That whole first week, Madame Petrov made Astrid stand facing the barre, holding it with both hands, learning how to do nothing more than move her head properly. She taught her how to turn out her hips, how to align her body. The way she was supposed to lift herself.
“Ballet is about forward movement, even when you are standing still,” Madame Petrov said. “More of your weight should always be on the balls of your feet, not your heels. And lift your chest.”
Astrid moved through each position with port de bras and épaulement. There was so much to think about besides her feet—her entire body needed her attention all at once.
“It’s not just the position that matters but how you get there,” Madame Petrov said. “Do it again. And again.”
Astrid watched the girls in the center of the room, the ones practicing pirouettes and pas de bourrées, their toes skimming across the floorboards. She was tired of gripping the barre, of doing pliés and tendus.
“These are too easy,” she complained to Madame Petrov. “I’ve been bending my knees since I was a child. Look. I’m ready for the floor.”
“If it’s easy, then you are not doing it right,” Madame Petrov had said. “Here we are building your foundation. The plié is the origin of every jump, every turn. If there is an imperfection in the foundation now, later the building will crumble.”
Now, Astrid joined the girls when they transitioned to the floor. Mary played the piano, and Astrid moved along with the others, practicing her entrechats, her glissades. When the others rose to their toes in their pointe shoes, she stayed on the floor on her canvas soles. Finally, when they moved exclusively into pointe work, she headed toward the dressing room.
“You will tell me when I’m ready?” she said to Madame Petrov, who was standing next to the piano. She asked this every day.
“I will tell you about Marie Taglioni,” Madame Petrov said. “Marie Taglioni—an ugly girl, by all accounts: hunchbacked, with long arms. Everyone told her to do something else, but she wouldn’t. She loved ballet. Her father trained her, choreographed a ballet for her,La Sylphide, the first full-length ballet on pointe. She performed it—she rose onto the tips of her toes, and she flew across the stage. Before, dancers had needed wires and pulleys backstage to do that, but she did it all by herself. She flew.
“Taglioni was a star,” Madame Petrov went on. “Her flaws became a thing of beauty. When she danced, her arms were always bent at the elbows or folded across her chest—designed that way by her father, of course, to hide their unattractive length. But they became classic Romantic poses. After her last performance, a group of young dancers cooked her pointe shoes and ate them. All this after they said she could never make it as a dancer—they loved her so much they ate her shoes.”
At dinner that night, Astrid told RJ about her upcoming recital.
“A recital?” RJ asked. “You’re going to perform in public?”
“Well, yes,” Astrid said. “That is sort of the point.”
