By Ava Stern

As long as the audience couldn’t tell, there was no pain — only the lingering afterimage of beauty. 


Flight was a unique feeling for a tall thirteen-year-old still growing into her unruly limbs. I can still smell the pungent tang of the artificial smoke that crept around me during the pas de deux. The tendrils swirled as I was flipped, lifted, and dragged, often to gasps from the audience. I moved regally in my beaded costume, adorned by the wired crown on my forehead. I felt every bit the snow fairy I was assigned to portray. The strong hands of my partner, a man far older than I, supported me as I ascended to the peak of my artform. Ten feet in the air, I had perfect splits, pointed toes, and syrupy applause filling my lungs.

I feel that my adult consciousness began to develop around that time. At the genesis of my identity, I was a coy, peacocking princess, slinking across the stage, all long legs and glitter. From where I stood, the future looked like an exponential curve; why would I expect any less? I’d never before had such a spotlight. Little girls — not much younger than me, I realize now — asked for my picture after the performance. Even after the show had closed, I was still heady from solitarily holding the role of Snow Queen. They chose me. It felt like responsibility; an acknowledgement. It felt like a gift.

A rip ran through my left side. My ribs contorted and twisted. My lungs expanded unevenly, hitching as I was lowered to the floor. As long as the audience couldn’t tell, my body held no pain — only the lingering afterimage of beauty.

Ballet is the art of creating perfection from pain. Calluses, blisters, blood, and sweat coat the scuffed marley floor where pink satin shoes dance. Syncopated clicks and clacks of pointe shoes harmonize with heavy breathing and sharp, instructive claps.

You’re late. Sissone on ONE.

I accept the challenge, though; it is a sport, after all. The need to hear my name in the mouths of my instructors became chronic. It meant they were watching me. They were witness to my attempted triple pirouette, to the frantic precision of my petit allegro. My mirrored studios were no place for positive reinforcement, but that wasn’t the name of the game. I strived for correction, a fervent need to be fixed. It was self-flagellation dressed in tulle. 

I’ve heard lots of abuse being thrown around ballet studios. Suck in, I can see your lunch. The invasiveness was nothing unusual. I consented to extraordinary scrutiny when I first rolled on pink tights. The beauty of ballet is in the minute details: turned-out hips, delicate fingers, pristine expressions. A natural body could never make those shapes without sharp two-fingered slaps telling you to hold your ribcage taut. It’s hard work, but effort produces results. Or, at least it’s meant to.

As I grew, I graduated from improvement. I continued to attempt the same pirouettes with the same anxious focus. I pulled my leg closer and closer to my nose, further and further past 180 degrees. I crunched my toes, exercised my balance, and tried to get better at my fouetté turns. Looking in those full-length mirrors during barre, I used to think about how people remove their ribs to allow them more back flexibility. I imagined my pelvis cracking open, unfolding into a wider turnout; I pressed my knuckles into the arch of my foot, hoping the pressure would force it to cave inwards. Nothing happened, of course. It had unfortunately occurred to me that prima ballerinas were born, not made.

My lack of excellence may have shorn down the excitement of dance, but I never would have quit because of that. A workhorse doesn’t think about whether it enjoys the plow. I showed up to the studio every afternoon, executed the combinations, and went home. I saw others surpass my technique and gain favor. Ballet was what I did, though, so I did it. I continued.

You look like you don’t care. That’s what did it for me. You look miserable every class. It ripped through me more violently than any derision or strained tendon. The words appeared red and welty, slapped across my skin. The very people I craved validation from, dismissing my effort out of hand. I was baffled when I heard that my teachers had said these things. I had been crying before private lessons and throwing up before performances, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care. If anything, it showed just how deep my care was. Care was leaking out of my pores and gathering in milky puddles at my feet. Couldn’t they see my desperate prostrations? No longer was it higher leg, Ava, or land softer, or shoulders down. It was that I looked miserable. What did my misery have to do with them?

I stayed, though. I think I was too young to identify that uncontrollable tears and gasping, coughing breaths weren’t signs of hard work, or a job well done. I was grasping desperately for the feeling of flight, but all I achieved was dehydration and black floaters in my field of vision. I began to satisfy my insatiable hunger with fervent striving instead of food. Unfortunately for me, physical strength and emotional impetuses have only a psychic link. I couldn’t fix the nervous, empty aching in my stomach with a role in our new production, or the pleasant combination of a head nod and a prim mhm.

One fateful Tuesday, during fondus, a profound feeling of lightness took hold of me. The barre blurred in front of my eyes, sound warped, and warmth engulfed me. It felt like flying, until I woke up sprawled on the cold tile of my dance studio lobby. I thought you were dead; you weren’t breathing. The cherry lollipop they gave me turned sour in my mouth as my mom drove me home, chattering about EKGs and dietitians.

A murmur, they told me. A quick double-beat running from my heart, through my arteries, then gone. My heart beat twice as hard for you. What did you ever do for me?

I have no idea what would have happened if the world wasn’t ripped away from me when I was fifteen. Earth’s rotation had slowed to a standstill in a matter of two weeks. I felt stupid pliéing in front of my laptop camera, only kicking half as high in my cramped attic. The studio that had composed my life felt as far away as anything, so one day, I shut my laptop after an hour of virtual adagio and decided to disappear. I tearfully told my mom not to sign me up for classes in the fall. My pointe shoes sat dead, fraying, structureless in a blue mesh bag.

Two years later, I was performing in The Nutcracker at my high school, and my old ballet teacher came to watch. I only found out afterwards that she had been there at all; she’d left before I emerged from the dressing room. I felt like running after her. I felt like texting her and asking if she thought my foot was sufficiently winged, or if my fingers looked too stiff. I felt like mourning. She ended up texting my mom – it’s good to see that Ava’s still dancing.

I was Sugarplum that year. The role reserved for the perfect older girls I used to peek at through linen curtains was mine. I had never thought I would be on stage during the earth shattering crescendos of the pas de deux, or the iconographic tinkle of the variation. I performed what might have been a mockery of Sugarplum — after all, I hadn’t been en pointe in two years — but I was happy. My high school dance team, though talented, was in the end merely a high school dance team. We sewed our own costumes and fastened each other’s tiaras with bobby pins we found on the floor. We forgot choreography, whispered to each other on stage, and laughed. We laughed a lot. I had my pointe shoes on for the first time in years, and I was laughing.
These are the things I think of now, when I hear the Nutcracker overture, or remember that I can do the splits. I see a communal bottle of hairspray and a mountain of leftover black jazz shoes discarded in the middle of the room. I hear the cackles of my friends as they see me strut out in one ridiculous costume or another. I think of my high school dance teacher, whose giggle I can remember as clearly as her less-than-traditional choreography. I miss the way the light streamed into that studio, and the way the kindergarten girls would stare at us as we rehearsed during their recess. I didn’t find that brightness in perfection, or pain, and I doubt I ever could have. The beauty of performance is inherently fleeting, existing solely in the moment of its creation. It can’t sustain a person on its own. ■