“Good luck,” he whispered.
I almost laughed. This wasn’t a real performance, of course. Just a staged rehearsal, but the exhilaration right before getting onstage hit me all the same. “You too!”
I pranced up and down on the box of my toe shoes, stretching out my arches and calves, rolling through the hard shank on the bottom of the slipper that held to the shape of my foot. This was my twenty-eighth year of dancing in The Nutcracker. I had started as young as Aly and continued every single year in my career. It was the cornerstone of my dance performances. I didn’t know a single dancer who had performed the same dances more than in The Nutcracker. During performance weeks, when we were doing two-a-day shows, I would still hear “Waltz of the Flowers” in my dreams.
The curtain rose, lights flickered to life, and Kathy stepped onto the marley floor to a round of applause. A minute later, she was introducing us. I held my arms in front of me as I gracefully ran out onto the stage along with the other dancers. I took my mark on stage right and waited beside Reginald.
Kathy moved us through what would appear to be a regular rehearsal schedule, focusing first on the difficulty we were having with the Arabian couple.
“One more time through, Amanda,” Kathy said evenly. “Use your whole body in the lift this time. Let Mateo guide you rather than forcing it.”
Amanda nodded along with Kathy and then tried it again. I was glad that I was onstage and couldn’t cringe because it was definitely worse the second time. They were going to get it by opening night, but they weren’t quite there yet.
“Peyton,” Kathy said after Amanda was on the ground once more, “do the pas de deux lift with Reginald. Everyone, watch her form to see what I mean.”
I stepped into position, too used to being an example to feel flustered, even here in front of the eyes of an audience. Kathy counted us in on a five, six, seven, eight, and then I was moving. My limbs an extension of my body. I knew Reginald would be there for the leap, and I launched effortlessly into the air. He lifted me with my arms overhead, legs in a split.
“See how Peyton appears to be light as air? Look at the placement of her hands, the strength of her point, the tilt of her head. Every aspect of her is incorporated into that movement. She isn’t fighting Reginald on the lift. He’s the base, the support. She trusts him and herself.”
I landed back on my feet to a spatter of applause. She made Amanda go one more time, and this time, she was better. Not quite there, but she’d gotten the dynamics back into place. I’d seen them perform it better in studio than they were today. They just needed to get the kinks out before they went onstage.
“Okay, places, everyone. Let’s run through ‘Entry of the Parents’ in Act I.”
I wasn’t actually in “Entry of the Parents,” but we’d practiced it this week with Reginald and me included in the piece for this event. It wasn’t a real struggle. We’d both already known the part. It was just rearranging the partners. The dance itself was a formal nineteenth-century ballroom piece, typically performed in full-length dresses and suits.
Kathy started us all at the midpoint of the dance and counted us in, and then we were off. As so often happened when I danced, everything else disappeared. There was no stage. No lights. No faces watching from the crowd. It was just me doing the thing that I loved most in the world. The job that had chosen me as much as I had chosen it. I’d sacrificed nearly everything in my life so that I could have this. The feeling that coursed through me was indescribable and unlike anything else I’d ever experienced.
Too soon, the dance ended. I was still lost to the exhilaration of the dance as Kathy critiqued the performance. Then, she called for Clara to come forward.
Bebe hastened to take her place, but Katelyn beat her to it. For a second, the two just stared at each other. Katelyn arched an eyebrow in defiance. Bebe ground her teeth together, a flush coming to her cheeks.
The gall of this girl. It took all my will not to tell Katelyn to get back into the corps, where she belonged. But I knew Kathy could handle it.
“Katelyn, I asked for Clara.”
“I’m the understudy,” she said quickly. “I thought it would be good for me to practice…just in case Bebe can’t perform the role.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Well, if that wasn’t a threat, I didn’t know what was.
Kathy pinched her lips together. “There’s no reason Bebe cannot play Clara. None at all. Bebe, step forward, dear. Let’s go through the new turn sequence in the middle.”