Story 2: The Breaths

Up. Down. Around. Up. Down. Around. “Your feet need to be pointed when they are not on the ground. This is not elementary level. You will perform well, or you will not make it”. Words spoken by the one and only Cynthia Conley. My raw talent got me my career during my time at The Academy of the Arts in Illinois. I dedicate this speech to stubborn old Conley, her meter stick, and to the academy students that doubted me. I became the best, because she was the only one who never just allowed me to quit. The stubbornness, embarrassment, and the talk were all worth it.

Relève- to rise. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Hellens, you are not breathing, do you wish to die on stage?” The thing Conley asked me in front of class often. She was good at embarrassing me in front of everyone. Raw talent can only take me so far. I don’t know how breathe. I can only jump and point my toes. My legs and lungs, are weak. “Everyone else may sit. Hellens will do this fifty more times. Perhaps she’ll learn to breathe,” and fifty more times I relève. My legs are no longer weak.

Demi- half of a whole. “You are only half as good as us,” “Your body is not built for this”, “Your hair… is unconventional”, “You don’t have the right look”. Yet, I ended up front and center. My hair sways like the grasslands of the west, ‘breathe, breathe, breathe’. The breaths don’t come. I am truly only half as good as the rest.

En arriere- to travel backwards. I put on my corset, my pointe shoes. “She’s a ward of the state. Her parents didn’t love her enough to keep her”. Their whispers worry me. They remind me of my future. I run, I hide, I scream, I cry. Or so I thought. Nothing truly came out. “I can’t do this. I want the papers to quit”, “How proud your parents are of you, Hellens”, her sarcastic voice leads me to speak the “truths” that I’ve told myself for years. “I’m a bastard child of teenagers. A bastard child, with a dead father. A bastard child who can barely remember their mothers face, because she only visits once a year. Each and every time she comes, she has a new baby, and a new hair color”. I cling to my past, en arriere, because I fear the same future. Adolescent ignorance is truly the worlds bliss.

Tête de mule- to be strong headed, stubborn. I wait for weeks. No papers have been filed. “You will not get the papers from me”, Conley is a stubborn woman. She is like a mule, and I am just a farmhand. I didn’t leave. I couldn’t. I dance more. I just go through the movements. ‘Breathe, breathe, breathe’, I got one breath of the three out. I will become the best. I will become the mule. My class will be the simple farmhands. They will wait for my lead.

Relève- to rise. “Hellens. Lead.” Just two weeks until graduation, ‘breathe, breathe, goddamn it, breathe’. This time I only get one breathe and an inhale. ‘Don’t think about it. Your hair is fine. Count the beats. You’re almost there.’ My mind races. I must start again. “Let’s start again. I’m sorry, my lace is loose”, and the meter stick slaps the bars. I had gotten so used to it that I barely noticed it. I was no longer the on making all of the mistakes. “Walk around and check their legs”, Conley says. I tap the beginner in the back and whisper, “Your feet need to be pointed when they are not on the ground. This is not elementary level. You will perform well, or you will not make it”. I place my foot next to hers, “and together, relève”. ‘Breathe, breathe, breathe’, together me and the anonymous dancer released three breaths.

Fin- the end, ending. As it has been seven years since I’ve even looked at my pointe shoes, my toes, and calluses remind me that because you’re different doesn’t mean that you can’t finish the race. The world is a harsh place, whether a person wants it to be or not, so I will perform well. So that I make it in anything I chose to do.