Savage Writing: Ballet

Last night was my last meeting with the Savages (at least for a while), since I’m leaving the UK in about a week. I’ll have to have a period of unemployment while I get a work permit in the new place I’ll be living in, so there’s a chance you might get some more fiction here so I don’t die of boredom 🙂

The topic theme, chosen by me, was “movement”.

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When she enters the hall she stands in a natural first position: heels together, toes pointing out. Clutching her bag strap in two fists like it’s a weapon, like it’s a club she will use to ward off anyone who approaches. She looks back, and up, at the father standing behind her.

‘Go on,’ he says, nodding his head towards the gaggle of girls at the back. She turns and walks over to the group. Feet thumping on the wooden floor. Heavy.

Her father goes over the dance-teacher: a tired looking woman in her twenties with elfin features and pointed shoulders.

‘Hi, I’m Adam,’ he says, holding out a hand. ‘We spoke on the phone?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lynn says, shaking his hand with firm fingered grip. ‘Glad you could make it. And this is Sophie?’

He looks to his daughter, standing awkwardly, not quite in the circle of the dancers. He can see the other girls have not warmed to her yet: they examine her, and her old off-white scrunchie, and faded second-hand leotard, and her ballet shoes – her shoes that are near-black on the bottom and over the toes. She looks both faded and dirty compared to their pristine baby-pink wear.

He wishes he could walk up and force them to see her for what she is, for how precious she is. He hates that he must leave her to this trial of childhood, again and again: the dance of acceptance and rejection that is gaining and having and losing friends while you’re all still learning to become decent people.

‘Yeah, we just moved here,’ he says to Lynn. ‘She’s a bit nervous. Do you mind if I watch for a few minutes, just to make sure she settles okay?’

‘Of course,’ Lynn says with a smile, but her eyes speak apprehension and annoyance: he can almost hear her thinking that he must be a helicopter parent, an overburdening man, a cage for his daughter to climb out of.

He doesn’t think he is. But maybe he’s wrong. He’s nothing but wrong half of the time, with this parenting thing. And from what Karen said at the end, it seems he’s been wrong and not realised it for the majority of the past decade or more.

Adam watches the warmup. Sophie goes to the back as the girls practise stretches and simple jumps in first and second position and changements (changing foot position in the air). The hall is a cacophony of thumps. He doesn’t know if Sophie is causing them or not; Karen used to always say she was too loud on these static jumps.

Then it is time for an exercise: a simple pas de bourree.

He sees light come into his daughter. Not in her eyes – she is too far away – but he sees the weight lift from her limbs as she raises her arms and begins: a bent-legged coupe, up on the toes, to the side, down into another coupe. And again.

For the first time in months, his daughter looks serene. Calm. She has smiled and laughed since Karen left, but she has never seemed calm, even when asleep.

Now into assembles. Through to sissones. Adam sees Lynn’s eye watching his daughter. She has seen it, as the other dance teachers at her old club saw: the arch-pointed feet, the elegance in the arms and shoulders, the precision of leg placement. And the serenity in every finger flick and toe-touch and turn.

Sophie is a dancer.

‘Split leaps,’ Lynn says. ‘Go to the corner of the hall.’

It’s a small hall, here, and not the dance studio Sophie is used to. The space is smaller. Even using the diagonal across the floor, it will be a struggle to get more than one leap in.

The other girls stride, leap with their front legs low and back legs high, and thump onto their feet at the end. Some take three tiny steps to right their balance. One outright stumbles. Sophie is last.

She hesitates. Tension returns to her shoulders. Heaviness threatening to settle again.

Go on, my girl, his heart pleads.

She takes two large steps.

Then, she leaps.

She pushes high into the air, front leg soaring out before her, back leg almost as high. She lands securely on her front foot, takes a step – and leaps again. Almost as perfect. Lands again on her front foot and takes one step forward, then stops. She is only a few inches in front of the group of girls.

‘Very nice!’ Lynn says. ‘Okay, everyone, let’s try again.’

The other girls are giving Sophie looks now – jealous and admiring looks. But she stands straight, and she smiles, because she knows she has done well. That is all he could ask of her. As she steps round the room, as she moves back to the corner to queue for the jumps, her feet swish across the floor as if she is a feather.

One of the girls whispers to her as they wait in the queue. Sophie smiles, and says what looks like a thank you. They whisper a little more. It is not her turn yet.

Adam smiles to himself and exits the hall silently, hoping neither Lynn nor his daughter will notice. As he goes down the corridor, he hears the teacher exclaim: ‘Wonderful! Yes, Sophie!’

His own feet are heavy as he walks to his car, as he goes back to his bare new home. Everything is still stolid and downward in him. But when he picks up Sophie a few hours later, and she skips out to him, he feels like he might, over time, gain some lightness from her: the lilt in her step, the swaying of her arms, and the contentedness of her smile as she replays her triumphs, and her new experiences, and hopes again for the future.