Footwork

Footwork





She was in the city for Bastille Day, the month before Woodstock, three weeks before the Manson murders. That last summer of the 60s was odd, probably because it was calendared with more iconic events than what was usual. At the time, she was just grateful to be out of the country. She walked by a high-heeled prostitute receiving benedictions on the street corner from a priest. The school was one block past them. The ballet school had accidently housed her with five young women in their twenties. She was 15. Out of small Italian North Providence, and then still called Mary Kate, she had never actually met a person who spoke more than one language. The roommate who greeted her at the door of the apartment went through four of them before she tried English. Mary Kate noticed that her greeter spoke with a perfect American accent. Of course, she had spoken the French, Italian, Spanish, and German greetings with perfect accents as well. Mary Kate followed the roommate of ambiguous origin into the apartment.

         It was three hours at the barre in the morning and then three hours of actual dancing in the afternoon. Their feet were grotesque, the skin cracked and nails lined with dried blood. Ballet is an unusual art in that way; the instruments are battered underneath the case rather than polished, like the woman in high heels who worked on the corner. After class, the older girls would take Mary Kate, who was thinking of dropping the Mary, out for drinks even though she was young even by European standards. They found her interesting. She and the rest of the American students did not get up in the middle of the July night to watch the broadcast of Armstrong’s first steps, indifferent to watching their own nation’s achievements. When all the dancers went out at night, they would try to teach Mary Kate French curse words.

         They knew that she was better than they were. Mary Kate could only get her foot up to an 80-degree angle by her head, but she moved as though her limbs were being manipulated by a celestial puppet master. Before class, while everyone was dragging rocks over the bottoms of their shoes, one of the Parisian girls joked that Mary Kate could be Baryshnikov’s partner. They laughed nervously at their own joke as though afraid it might be true.

         Kate did not dance with Baryshnikov, although she was in a theater in Washington with him on one occasion when the dancers in the corps hid in the bathroom because they were afraid to meet him. She might have danced with the Russian had she not already begun her string of divorces. Divorce is quite the distraction. Kate would be distracted by a lot of things. Her toes hurt. She wanted to sit down.

         Black and white photographs of the performances from the French school show a sophisticated woman who looks nothing like Mary Kate. Up close on a regular day, one could tell that she was not beautiful yet, without any makeup and eyes that were slightly too close to accommodate her nose. The photograph had been taken from a few rows down in the theater. Mary Kate, soon to drop the Mary, was like a raven. Black sleeves came down her arms so that when she stretched them she looked ready to take flight. But like a raven, not a swan. Stage eye shadow painted her face from the corner of her eyes halfway to her hairline. It was all very imposing. The European girls had seen the raven. They saw her wings and talons.