The Art of Falling (10 page)

The familiar scent of dry-cleaning fluid wafted over from Chen’s Laundry and Herbal Supplements on the first floor, the source of a running joke that dance at the Bebe Browning School of Dance was “good clean fun.” The stairs I once took three by three, as a quick warm-up when I was running late for class, I now climbed one by one, grateful that I still could.

As soon as I entered the reception area, I heard the piano. My heart leapt. I pictured Bebe readying herself for class, her hair dyed to a blond frizzle and flowing down over the caftan she always wore. I whipped around the corner and through the door—but instead of Bebe found a young girl tying the pink satin ribbons of her pointe shoes. The music came from a tape deck, not the piano. The girl was as surprised to see me as I was to see her.

“I’m allowed to be here,” she said. “I got permission—”

“Relax. I used to do the same thing.” Young talent is tender. It can only grow when safe from the icy glares of competitors. “I’m looking for Bebe.”

“Oh, Miss Browning isn’t back yet.”

“When do you expect her?”

“The end of the semester, I think.”

I tried to remember when I’d last seen Bebe. Late last fall? Once I moved in with Dmitri, time slipped away. “Is she vacationing?”

“She got a grant to study South American dance…I’m sorry, but I have to get to work.”

She was a cute little bunhead. Watching her mark through a sequence brought back memories of simpler times, when trying my best was always rewarded.

On my way out, I saw the nutrition poster Bebe had put up when I was a teen. It was basically the food pyramid—with a few custom modifications. She’d added a new base—
DANCE: It’s all you’ll ever need
. Above that she’d completely replaced the bread group (which she called “dough”) with glasses of skim milk and water. The layer of vegetables and fruits she’d left untouched; above them, she’d flattened the proteins and dairy to half their former height. The triangle typically sitting up top—representing sweets, fats, alcohol, and other “foods used sparingly”—she’d lopped off altogether. We called it the “Food Mesa.” She’d had it laminated, and although it had yellowed a bit, its advice had held up well over time. I ran my hand fondly down its surface. Bebe had offered me the discipline and focus I couldn’t get at home.

Beyond the food mesa, someone had tacked a snapshot of Bebe to the wall. She stood against a backdrop of mountains, surrounded by a gaggle of sun-bronzed kids, her closed mouth turned up at the corners. Bebe would not let that brown tooth be photographed. Beneath the picture hung a collage of postcards she’d sent from Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil—the dance world was clearly spinning fine without me.

I wondered if Bebe had any sense of the miracle that allowed me to read her words. She had probably contributed to it—if I’d drunk soda instead of the buckets of milk and water, who knew how many of my bones would have succumbed to the stress of my fall?

Ever since I left her apartment for Dmitri’s, I’d acted as if he was all I’d ever again need. That was a mistake. Now she was off feeding her own inner artist, as she had every right to do. But there was a time, before she fired me, that I was special to Bebe. Her protégé. Now I was an anonymous recipient of group greetings.

• • •

Outside, the early morning rain had tapered to mist. Beads of moisture collected on my clothes as if they’d been sweating. On South Street, I passed my favorite mural, a massive mosaic that had always spoken to me. Pieces of broken mirror highlighted waves of color splashed across the side of a building. A line of tiles spelled out a message that still held hope: “Art Is the Center of the Real World.” I ran my hand over the mural’s uneven surface. From a reflective shard, one of my own eyes looked back at me.

I rounded the corner onto Broad across from the Arts Bank, where we’d premiered the first pieces Dmitri and I worked on as a team—
Puma
,
Arena
, and
Zephyr
. Margaret MacArthur, in the
Philadelphia
Sentinel
, deemed them successes. I had read her review with conflicting emotions. I was flattered she had used such rich detail and imagery—we not only captured her attention, we inspired her writing. Yet she failed to note my contribution. The omission ate at me for days until I finally asked Lars to see the program he’d printed.

• • •

“Why’d you leave me out of this?” I said, after scanning it.

“Your name is there, two times.” Lars pointed once to the roster of dancers, and once to my listing as rehearsal assistant.

“But not as assistant choreographer. You know I helped with every piece on this program. Especially
Puma
.”

“Take it up with the boss.” He stopped short of a smile, but I could tell my distress was of no concern to him. “Dmitri gave me the copy.”

“In English?”

He laughed. “I just typed it up.”

I didn’t want to confront Dmitri in front of the others, so I waited until he was heading home. I grabbed my stuff and caught up with him.

“Were you happy with MacArthur’s review?” I asked.

“Yes. Like me, she thinks the company looks strong.”

“And you’re happy with my contribution?”

“Every day I grow because you are beside me.” He put his arm around me and squeezed.

“Why wasn’t my name listed as assistant choreographer in the program, then? We worked on those pieces together.”

He stopped walking and dropped his arm. The queer smile on his face revealed his uncertainty as to whether we were still having a friendly chat.

“The ideas were mine, Penny. You were helping. If you want to make a name, you can make your own piece.” The mist escaping his mouth into the chill of the night underscored the import of his words.

“And Dance DeLaval would perform it?”

“If it fits the program.”

I threw my arms around him. He peeled them away.

“Work on your own time. We will see how good it is. Show me what you come to,
oui
?”

Life continued as usual by day, but back at my little room above Bebe’s, I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. This was a chance beyond anything I’d hoped for. I wouldn’t be adding my fingerprints to the surface of one of Dmitri’s ideas; I’d have a chance to leave my own footprints in Philadelphia’s dance world.

I didn’t have the confidence to call a rehearsal without knowing what I’d do—I couldn’t, wouldn’t waste the dancers’ time, and risk their ridicule while choking in front of them. So I sketched their bodies in a primitive fashion on a piece of paper. Four perfect bodies—I wasn’t so presumptuous as to cast Dmitri in my piece—and my own larger frame. They remained on the page. Stick figures, incapable of expression.

Dimension—that’s what I needed. I emptied my change purse onto the table. For hours, I pushed around four thin dimes and one penny. It might have helped to put on some music, but I didn’t want my dance to serve the music—I wanted the music to serve the dance. So I sat in silence, scraping coins across the little table in my apartment until I’d the scratched the finish off. I ended up with nothing more than meaningless floor patterns.

As an artist, even I had to admit: that penny didn’t fit in. I’d either have to: (1) draw attention to my size difference and make something of it; (2) feature myself as a soloist; or (3) take myself out of the piece. I’d fought too long for equal opportunity to choose option one. And while I considered myself talented enough to compete against any dancer working today for a solo, I didn’t have the hubris to bestow one upon myself. Unbelievably, I drew the same conclusion Dmitri had. Option three it was—I was out.

Even with this decision behind me, my anxiety mounted. It wouldn’t suit for the piece to be “good.” I wanted to blow the company’s tights off. If we couldn’t be friends, then I wanted at the very least to earn their respect. I wanted to surpass Dmitri’s expectations. Win my own self-confidence. I had incredible resources right downstairs—Bebe, her dancers, and her studio—but I couldn’t bring myself to ask for them. Besides, I had a growing sense that not all choreography was transferable from dancer to dancer. When coaching Dance DeLaval, I encouraged each dancer to think about the work’s larger theme, and infuse each step with his or her own experience of it. For me, it was this prismatic perspective that brought modern dance to life.

To do this my way, I’d have to develop the work the scariest way possible: live, in the studio, with Dmitri’s dancers. I called each of them to tell them our weekend rehearsal would start two hours earlier, and trusted that when push came to shove, my inner artist would burst forth within me.

On Saturday, they faced me: Karly. Lars. Tina. Mitch. Four perfect bodies, capable of anything my imagination could cook up. A quartet? Two couples? A trio and a soloist? No matter how I subdivided, the same math failed me. Only now, eight eyes looked on, with only slightly masked annoyance. I dug deep, but inspiration refused to surface. I’d suffered too much criticism for too many years to expose my inner artist in an environment tinged with hostility. The silence pressed. My stomach cramped. I had no moisture in my mouth. The moment stretched, on and on, with the ramping inevitability of Ravel’s
Bolero
—but without its climax.

Tina finally broke the silence. “So what’s the big secret? Why did we have to come early?”

“I, um, wanted to surprise Dmitri with…” I couldn’t complete the sentence.

“You okay, Penny?” Mitch said. “You look a little yellow.”

“Sure.” I went over to my dance bag and finished the roll of antacids I’d picked up on the way to the studio. I needed to set these dancers in motion, and I had to do it now.

Even though they were clueless about the hell I’d just endured, I couldn’t look at the rest of them when I gave up. I spoke only to Mitch. “Can you put on the music for
Arena?
That group movement during Dmitri’s solo—I think we can develop it a bit further.”

My big chance—I could have given myself a solo!—and that’s all I made of it. Without Dmitri to summon it, my inner artist refused to emerge. It remained walled off, like a spore. Dmitri, as it turned out, was
my
muse.

• • •

Hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent since 1993 to turn this section of Broad Street into the Avenue of the Arts. Ticket holders coming into town generated $10 million in Pennsylvania state taxes each year. Its venues held more than 14,000 people, who traveled into the city to see performers like me. The “me” I used to be, anyway. That day, I blended in with every other person on the sidewalk. My picture was not on a poster at the Wilma; my visage was not dancing across the big screen outside the Kimmel. Nor was Dmitri’s—he’d used the Avenue of the Arts as his launch pad and the work we’d developed together as his fuel, and left me behind to breathe his exhaust. I had to face it: art was no longer the center—or the reality—of my world.

With only that twenty still in my pocket, I had a sudden need for a makeover.

I passed two pricier beauty shops before I found a wizened barber sitting on his Locust Street stoop, smoking a cigarette. I asked him what he charged. “Ten for a cut, five for a buzz.”

I looked at his nicotine-stained fingers. “Will you wash your hands?”

He sat me in his chair, made a big show of sanitizing, and caped me. He pulled my hair out of its habitual ponytail. “What do you have in mind?” I had no plan. I simply wanted to see a refreshed image the next time I looked in the mirror. I was so literal in this intent, I asked him to turn me from the mirror while he cut so I couldn’t see what he was doing.

“Ay, ay, ay,” he said as he spun me round. “Ya better give me something to go on, missy, or you might be sorry. We just talking a trim?”

I perused the photos of local male celebrities on the wall before me and chose an old shot of Jon Bon Jovi. “Can you do something like that?”

Long hanks of hair fell to the floor, each metallic scrape of the scissors cutting my remaining ties to Dmitri. What loss I felt was balanced by my desire to see myself anew. When he finished, he said, “Want to see what I did, or walk outta here not knowing who the hell you are?” He unlocked the chair with his foot and spun me around. “See that, missy? Stick-straight before. Now this hair has movement.” He flicked at layered wisps that accented eyes and cheekbones and jawline.

The result was both jarring and fascinating. In a lifetime spent before the mirror, in which I had called every aspect of my body into question, this was the first time my face had been my focal point.

I smiled at myself in greeting.

• • •

“Stop in often! New items every day!” promised the sign outside the Bibliophile, but the used bookstore looked stagnant and overstuffed. I found Angela bent over, taking books from a pile at her feet and packing them into a box.

“Whatcha doing?” I said.

When she turned, the dark mask strapped to her face startled me. A happy face sticker brightened the nose.

“Angela? Is that you in there?”

“Penny? I love your hair!” she said, her voice muffled.

I ran my fingers through a style so new I couldn’t quite picture it again. “It should be easier to detangle, anyway.”

“Did you stop by and show Marty?”

When I shook my head no, the hair tickled my jaw. “Been on the move all day. What’s with the mask?”

“Books are magnets for molds and mildews. This keeps them from irritating my lungs.”

“Ah. Well, I’m on the way to physical therapy now. I wanted to thank you again, for having me overnight and taking me to the gym.”

One of the books at her feet caught my eye. “If I had any money left, I’d buy you that one as a thank-you gift. It reminds me of you.”

“
Living
with
Chronic
Illness
? I’ve read it. I’m pulling together a box for the CF kids at Children’s Hospital.” She flipped open the cover. “See, we have a date stamp in each book. If it hasn’t moved in a year, my boss donates it.”

“I meant this one.” I bent down and picked up a book decorated in bright greens, reds, oranges, and yellows. “
Tree
Frogs
. A couple of these critters would look cute on your Tree of Life, wouldn’t they?”