Strip by Andrew Binks Page A

Daniel’s cat. He had a cat?
    â€œI talked to someone who talked to someone else who said d’ey saw him, said d’ey t’ought ’e was back,” Hugues finally said.
    â€œHe’s back?”
    â€œDidn’t you know he might have a job as a répétiteur in New York?” Hugues grinned. “You know him. ’e ’as lots of friends, you ’ave to share ’im, and you ’ave to enjoy him when ’e is around.” After that, Hugues didn’t speak English so well.
    Add to this foundering romance the fact that there seemed no plan of attack for my physique, and I lost my footing. I had avoided the Conservatoire long enough. I started taking drop-in classes, hoping it would eventually lead me to him and be noticed at the same time. I could wait no longer for some kind of dream of a mentorship with Daniel. I couldn’t dance in a bubble. I finally decided to audition for the Conservatoire, but no one took much notice, and one of their uptight répétiteurs had the gall to suggest I take a simpler class. I had gone from professional soloist, well second soloist, in the West to corps in the East. Dancers return to the basics occasionally, it does us good, so I took my training in hand and surrounded myself with summer students following a pounding drill by a Chanel No. 5–marinated, Gestapo torturess. The Conservatoire studios were legendary, but paid the price for their nastiness. Although their teachers had produced fine dancers, the best had gone off to New York and companies in Europe.
    â€œYour technique has been forced,” the torturess said. “You will ’ave to start over. You will ’ave to relearn.”
    Then another frustrated emaciated has-been picked up where the torturess left off, in a men’s class. Between pliés we did the usual sets of push-ups, with her on our back, chin-ups with her pulling down on our ankles, and pliés with each of us sitting on a partner’s shoulders, to make us solid. “Your plié is completely wrong.” She pinched my lower back with her claws. I can still feel it.
    The third blow came from a faded legend. Not a Daniel, but someone who owed his reputation to all of the years that had passed. The other dancers called him the “Sugar Plum Fairy” under their breath. He was an overgrown, over-the-hill, alcoholic boy whose shape changed between each binge and purge of booze and pizza, gravy-soaked frites and Frusen Glädjé , hold the waffle cone. He whined, “You just aren’t serious enough.”
    I’d heard about his definition of serious: he went down on his knees to keep his job. But all he did was pray and cry and beg. I refused to beg, but returning to the basics for a while wouldn’t hurt my technique. I had to trust what Daniel had said. So I ate less, drank more coffee, warmed up earlier, stayed later, took every class on the schedule. And I made sure to keep my appointment with Madame Ranoff, the artistic director, to make it clear what my plans were.
    Madame’s office was dark. The collected years of history crowded the atmosphere, robbed the air of oxygen, turned living beings to chalk. Madame looked as transparent as the ghosts in the photographs on her wall. Her old skin was waxworks smooth, her smile small, tight and forced. Every time she opened her mouth her dentures clicked. She had been making tough, do-or-die decisions for years to keep her dancers working. She was another who had danced with the Original Ballet Russes. And like the truly intimidating legends—Graham and Makarova—she had a rock-hard soul. Single-mindedness, time and obsession turned people like Madame Ranoff and the Sugar Plum Fairy into legends.
    I didn’t tell her I had cut my ties, or about my training in the West. I was a fool to think I could marry into the Montreal dance world. She must have known. They all must have thought I was an opportunist. When a