Distractions

I read an interview many years ago with a Paris Opera Ballet dancer, and she said something I've always remembered. She said that it is very important to escape the dance world. She likes to explore the city, for example, and this is her way of getting away from the stress and the intensity of her work. I have come to appreciate this advice more and more since I read it, many years ago when I was still a student. For me, travel is also a wonderful escape. 

But when you can't travel, and you can't get out of the studio, there's another thing that is a terrific escape: stories. 

In a way, dance is made up entirely of stories. Some are obvious and some are entirely below the surface. Perhaps this is why I find writing stories to be such an amazing experience, one that is able to completely pull me away from the problems and challenges I face in the studio. 

Below you'll find a sample of my fiction, and of a realm that is for me, one of the few things in my life that is entirely separate from my work in the dance world. 

They arrived, Daniel pulling a baguette and brie out of his backpack, Amelia clutching her notebook, gazing up at the museum which rose before them, quietly and determinedly into the gray Parisian sky. In line behind a group of American students, they stood in silence, eating bread and cheese with their fingers. Wordlessly Amelia led him through the crowd in the garden, past the Thinker and the Gates of Hell, and into the main house, towards her favorite statue. 

They paused to admire it, bathed in a pool of pale light from the tall windows. 

'Is it possible to love someone that much?' Amelia asked him, as they stood gazing at Camille Claudel's L'Age Mur statue. The figures in the statue seemed to be moving, falling ever forward before them, the man turning away from the woman's slavish gaze. 

Four years ago Amelia had been taught Claudel's work in a French class. A classmate had asked the same question, skeptical and disbelieving of Claudel's ill-fated existence: "they must be exaggerating, it just can't be true. You just can't love someone that much. Enough to destroy your entire life by your own hand. It's impossible. It's all for the drama of the story."

Their French teacher, a surly blonde woman with a constantly furrowed brow and a strong penchant for running, answered after a moment: "Oh, yes. It is most definitely possible." 

Our young heroine sat brooding over the question as her classmates protested. Finally the French teacher waved her hand and said, attempting a chuckle, "you are all too young to understand." 

Amelia knew that she was not. 

In their English class they had been assigned an anthology. Amelia had a used copy. Each day in English class when Amelia opened her book, it would fall open to the page with Shakespeare's 116th sonnet. 

And each day when class began, Amelia let her book fall open, and read in disbelief the words that meant someone else had been as crazy as she. The words that meant — perhaps only implied, but Amelia was quite certain level — that it was indeed  possible: "love is not love / which alters when it alteration finds / or bends with the remover to remove... / ... "  

It had been months, almost a year since they had split. Daniel had since moved on. There was a girl back home, where he was. And still she sat in English class, away at school halfway across the country, unable to rid herself of the thought of him. But she wasn't crazy. She was in fact quite sane. And it was terrible, painful, and she was ashamed of it. But it seemed to be true. The poem, and Claudel's frightening narrative pointed to the truth of it. 

So when she stood with him, four years later, in front of the statue, it was in disbelief. She reveled in how remarkable it was, looked up into those small, bright eyes and wondered if she dared ask. 

Decideding she would dare, she asked him the question. 

He didn't answer, but stared with her at the statue. And together they watched as the figures fell forward, Claudel's arms outstretched toward the man who would destroy her.