Her Name Was Alli

Her name was Alli, and she lent me her grace.

We first met years ago, during a summer workshop on acting Shakespeare. Only the kids from the arts school knew each other, and they were three out of fifteen. It was one of those weeks when the sheer emotional impact forces you into each others’ company; acting is a way of baring your soul, and each of us took our turn in the center of that sparse tiled room. One by one, we slowly stripped away our inhibitions and allowed the director to chisel down to our cores and brush away the shavings. Acting is molding. Acting is forming connections where there are none.

And it was that lack of connection that had us so hesitantly viewing our other classmates. The first day was steeped in superficiality. The idea of unknown and intimacy brushing so closely together was uncomfortable and frightening. No one really reached out that first day, except for Alli.

She was open and bright from the beginning, waltzing into that cold tiled room with colorful Converses and mismatched accessories. Her hair color and facial expressions reminded me of a girl I’d known in middle school, and I settled into my familiar pattern of watching her closely. That’s what I’m best at. I watch and I learn and I grope for the blunt edges of the puzzle pieces before I can make the first contact.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed Alli. Her cheery disposition was balm on our frayed nerves, and she became the center of magnetism in the room. When Alli performed, we soaked it in, and during the breaks between exercises we gravitated towards her comforting warmth.

When you put a bunch of teenagers in a room together, a social hierarchy is bound to form. By the end of the first day, Alli was our placeholder at the top of the ladder. As the week went on and our unified confidence grew, the ladder became more of a gentle slope. But Alli was always on top, because she was the one that drew us together.

We ended that week with wistful hugs and an exchange of email addresses, and I watched mournfully as the rope of our group bond again dissolved into individual fibers. Alli and I emailed for a few weeks, but initial cyber contact can be even more awkward than initial personal contact. The connection faded away.

It was more than a year later when I saw her again. I was joining the end of a series of summer jazz classes held at the community theater, and I walked into that polished dance studio to see her stretching on the floor. I blurted out her name in the moment in the same moment that she looked up, and we rushed to greet each other. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t been best of friends during the theater workshop, and it didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen her in over a year. I was familiar. She was someone I knew.

The class ran for two more sessions after that, and Alli and I grew together faster over leather shoes and aching muscles than we had over a week of Shakespeare. We parted with a promise to meet again; auditions for a fall production were in several weeks. And meet again we did.

We huddled in that circular theater, quivering inside and out and trying to make a good first impression on the directors seated before us. Alli stuck by my side through the segments of song and dance, and my anxiety was soothed by her familiar presence. She too remarked afterwards that with me around, she hadn’t felt nearly as terrified.

The cast list came in a frenzied tension that blurred into elation as I found my name, then Alli’s. A text message from an unknown number later that night linked us officially, establishing a cyber connection more sure and lively than our first attempts.

I didn’t see as much of Alli for the first few weeks of practice. Our rehearsals were spaced differently, and we were both caught up in the whirl of new faces, new names, new rules, new ways to play the game. It took all of our concentration just to keep on track.

Opening night arrived and brought with it all the energy of a new show. Alli and I clung to each other like we had during times in the past, even though the desperation was gone. Now we weren’t friends out of necessity or safety; we were friends born from communal blood and sweat and tears. We always seemed to collide, drawn together by that bright connection.

But I didn’t take full advantage of her at first. I was too busy falling in love with the show, with the high, with the ritual, and with another one of my costars.

This was my first recognized love, and it was hard and fast and excruciating; I was ready to pour my entire being into forging a new type of connection. It was only after I was drained dry by exhaustion and emotion that I came to my senses and fell into Alli again.

She was as familiar as my heartbeat by now, and she distracted me from my pain and brought me back into the exhilarating rush of putting on a show. We started to dance together in the darkened wings during the classical breeze of intermission, and I began to learn a new kind of trust. She required me to surrender my control and leave my responsibility in the hands of another, and in return, she taught me to soar. She listened to me talk about love and anguish and fed me stories of her own, so by the time our dances ended our threads were so intertwined it was hard to tell where I ended and she began.

Even after the show reached its end, Alli and I continued to dance together. I came back to take classes at the theater, and more often than not, Alli was there. She had a different type of intensity on the dance floor, and once again she was on the top of the ladder. Her worn leather jazz shoes and her Aeropostle sweatpants became the center of our classes; once again, our eyes were always on Alli. She had such style and pizzazz – dance channeled her inner spark and translated her love of life into class and grace.

We spent a wonderful week at a workshop intensive this past summer; she was the teacher’s assistant and I was a newbie. It was during that week that I dusted off my past experience with swing dancing and polished my skills with the help of my new partner. Our teacher gave us some new combinations to add to our repertoire, and Alli joined her hands with mine as we delved into the challenges and rediscovered the joy of dancing together.

I was always the man, since I was inclined to start the steps to the right. Alli had much more experience and skill on the dance floor than I, though she was willing to turn over control and let me be the leader. This was a new kind of trust for me. The success of our moves depended on my ability to communicate my aim and gently cue Alli in the right direction. I couldn’t have asked for a more receptive partner, and our experience dancing together in the past had set our bodies in tune with each other.

“You’re so good at leading,” she laughed one time as she spun into my arms and I dipped her gently.

“It’s because I’m no good at following,” I joked in return. “It’s my way or the highway.”

Though that wasn’t necessarily the case. Alli had taught me to be open and flexible. We would flow from step to step, though sometimes my cues would be too vague and I would have to follow her as she moved a different way.

Dance is a lot like acting sometimes. It’s forming a connection, though one of a different kind. Dancing often requires a type of trust that wasn’t natural to me, not until Alli taught me.

I may not be much of a dancer, though I really do love it. I love asking my body to do something and feeling the release of a successful execution, and I’ve even grown to love the bruises and sore muscles the next day. I know I’m not always smooth or classy when I dance, but I’ve learned to keep going even when I feel awkward. Because dancing with a partner who forced me to surrender control and to trust completely gave me a glimmer of the inner poise that provides the resilience to never give up.

I rarely see Alli nowadays, but I think of her when I dance, and I think of her when I form a connection with someone that requires that extra level of trust and vulnerability. Her name was Alli, and she lent me her grace.