This is really happening, if you have the guts.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Yeah, I am.”
Darlene
In the break room at Serenity Spa the next day, I changed out of my uniform and slipped a black leotard and spandex dance shorts on under my sundress. My stomach was twisted in knots and my arms felt heavy from the day’s massages.
This is stupid, I thought for the hundredth time as I left the spa. I was ridiculously unprepared for this dance audition, and certain to fail.
Is that why you agreed to audition in the first place? A voice in my head sounding suspiciously like Max wondered. So you can say you tried without really trying?
“Oh, hush,” I murmured, and gnawed on the cuff of my sweater the entire bus ride to the studio.
I arrived at the San Francisco Dance Academy with thirty minutes to spare. The woman at the front desk told me a space had been reserved for the audition but was open now if I wanted it. I paid $15 to jump in early and warm up.
The dance room had a mirror covering one entire wall, with a barre running along its length. Golden sunlight streamed in from the high windows, and spilled across the wooden floors. A sound system with a tangle of cords sat against the wall under the windows beside a couple of simple wooden chairs and a few wooden rifles. I picked up a rifle and gave it a spin. Maybe someone was rehearsing the finale to Chicago, one of my favorite musicals.
If I let myself envision my perfect show, it was Chicago. I wasn’t the strongest singer, but I could hold a key. I wanted to play Liz, the inmate who killed her husband because he wouldn’t stop popping his gum. “The Cell Block Tango” was my dream performance, but instead of preparing and training for a major role, I was winging an audition for a tiny, independent dance troupe that advertised on a lamppost.
You aren’t even prepared to dance for a tiny, independent dance troupe that advertises on a lamppost.
“Stupid.” I put the prop down and sat on the floor.
My eyes kept glancing at the door as I stretched. Any second now, it would open. The director I’d spoken to on the phone would walk in and I’d make a ginormous fool of myself. But I kept stretching and breathing, waking my body from its hibernation. I wanted to get up and run, but at four-fifteen, the door opened and I was still there.
Greg Spanos was a tall, dark-haired guy; early thirties, dressed all in black. He was followed by an artsy-looking gal in glasses and streaks of blue in her hair.
“I’m the director and choreographer of Iris and Ivy,” he said, shaking my hand. “This is Paula Lee, the stage manager.”
“Hi,” I said with breathy nervousness. “Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m Darlene.”
I watched them size me up, certain that the fact I was utterly unprepared was written all over my face.
“A moment, please,” Greg said.
He and Paula carried two chairs from the side of the room, and set them up on one end, their backs to the wall mirror. With no table, they rested their folders on their laps and endeavored to look professional.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
At the sound system against the wall, I plugged my phone in and hurried back to the middle of the room. I’d barely taken my position on the floor—lying on my back as I had in New York—when the music started.
“The music is the language and your body speaks the words.”
My first dance teacher told me that when I was eight years old, scowling in a pink tutu. I hated the tutu and the ballet flats on my feet. I wanted to be barefoot and raw. Even then, the something inside me that wanted to dance was a fierce energy that I loved to feed. I’d given it everything—my sweat and tears; aching muscles and sprained ligaments. It was there, that urge to sing for the world with my entire self.
Until I’d ruined it with drugs. Dirtied it. Soiled myself so that dancing while the X or the coke surged through my veins felt like a violation of that pure energy.
But I’m here now.
I closed my eyes and let the first notes of the music seep into my bones and muscles and sinew; I listened with my body. When Marian Hill sang the first lines, my back arched up off the wooden floor, and then I was gone; lifted up by the soft words and gentle piano, then sparking to life when the techno beat dropped.
I forgot everything else and lived between each note, moment to moment, feeling everything I wanted to feel without thinking or stopping myself. I let my body speak for the music and there was no shame, in these words. No loneliness.
Only myself, and I was alive.
I collapsed to my knees, arched back, and lifted one arm—grasping at air—as the last note on the last word faded away to silence.