Chapter 10 Something unique when She dances
"I like her hyper flexibility" thought Angie with her eyes fixed on the immensity of the mirrors around the room "I wish I was her" she concluded looking over Birdy, barely glancing at her as if she wanted to ignore her and at the same time she couldn't stop looking at her to understand what makes her so special and captivating, she looks at her with frustration and envy.
\- Fortunately, you are very good at improvising contemporary dance - Pilar said sweetly.
\- Maybe it's a facet I haven't discovered in myself - says Birdy.
\- How do you feel? - Pilar wanted to know, observing her student, who was breathing heavily and stretching her arms above her head.
\- Much better.
\- Great," added Pilar, looking at her with penetrating eyes, full of knowledge, like an owl, "now we can go on with the Classical class.
\- Can we improvise too? To practice freestyle - Angie wanted to know.
\- Another day - Pilar affirmed sweetly.
\- Next class we can practice a little contemporary. Julles... please.
The piano began to play Claire de Lune as soon as Pilar gave the order and all the dancers positioned themselves at the bar to begin with a port de bras.
Birdy continues with her classical dance along with her partners of the Company, she moves her arms gracefully like a swan, and travels to places of her childhood where she was happy and loved by her parents and her grandmother, who was also a dancer. She closes her eyes and moves her arms and feet to the rhythm of the music in tendiu and degallé, the Parisian Victor envelops that morning and envelops the city with clear and cold tones, it has not snowed but soon the first snowfall will begin, as the trees devoid of leaves await the winter.
Suddenly she remembers the last winter she lived with her grandmother. At the end of ballet class, they begin to rehearse a new choreography with the dancers taking the Choreographic Montage class. Birdy, being a professional and prima ballerina, is already a professional choreographer, although she prefers to work only as a performer. She drinks from her pink thermos of water from the dressing room lockers and looks at herself in the long bathroom mirror. Staring into her eyes, she remembers her grandmother's words written in her diary. She sits in a long, carved mahogany armchair, recessed into the floor, the floor also mahogany, made of a different wood and covered by a carpet, is smooth and the wood uniform. Birdy, sitting in the armchair, takes the diary from her Louis Vuitton handbag. Then she opens it to page 17.
9 - 12- 93. Paris
Winter:
Unlike the previous year, Everth had a chaperone, I would wait for him for lunch and dinner. Every night when he arrived from the Scala Theater, he would heat up dinner and eat slowly while he told me how the day had gone; that day had been good, he had danced three shows and sold out all the tickets, he told him that he was planning to keep part of it because there could be a storm at any moment, and they needed to remodel his house, but a good offer, mine, changed his plans. I needed the money to travel in the winter with Navil, the Company's new choreographer who had cleverly assigned Everth to be the lead soloist in Don Quixote, so that I could rehearse Copeira away from him, near Navil.
Everth and I lived in the town of El Morado En El Cajon del Milan. We spent our leisure time learning to sculpt, to perform various postures with hyper flexibility during the sexual act. Activity to which we had given ourselves the previous winter, madly in love, due to the heavy snowfalls that did not allow us to go out to the woods or to the nearest community to do our usual winter work, skiing and playing with the snow. For this winter they were forecasting temperatures well below 0º Celsius, with constant snowstorms. But Navil had invited me to travel to the Caribbean, where his parents lived, and we could spend the days fucking and practicing various sexual positions under the Cancun sun in Mexico.
That night the snow began to fall. When Everth had gotten up he discovered a storm that, while not bad, presaged a storm for that afternoon, so he decided to go out immediately to gather as much firewood as possible. By noon the weather had worsened and Everth had to return home with what little he had gotten so far. At home he stored the wood in a suitable place so that it would not get damp. As usual, while he ate his lunch, he gave me an account of all that had been accomplished that morning, and I took the opportunity to tell him my thoughts about the weather. Everth did not know that he would be traveling to Mexico, Cancun. I thought I would be in Lyon with my best friend Belmary as her mother was very ill and I would help her take care of her. He was moved by a noble deed and seemed honest and courageous and gave me his support, in addition to a large part of the money received from his presentation of Don Quixote at the Scala in Milan. The truth is that I felt no guilt, I felt frenzy and enthusiasm to travel to the Caribbean with the person I loved.
The storm continued during the following days; although intermittently, it did not allow us to leave the house. The temperature reached -10º, Everth and I only separated from the fireplace, at night to sleep, nights that for Everth's happiness we spent hugging each other warming ourselves, in this way I also assured him that my heart belonged to him, and would not make him doubt my future trip to Cancun for the end of the year, in the mornings after preparing breakfast and hot tea I returned to my strong hours of rehearsal and ballet.
In spite of how monotonous the days had become during the winter vacations, after two weeks without leaving the house and with no other activity than dancing ballet, rehearsing, making love, drinking tea and wine, Everth was at ease, he was in company and could dedicate all that time to my company since, usually, he spent all day outside the house, rehearsing in plays where for some reason I no longer danced with him.
It was the third week. That morning Everth drove me to the airport. He had begun to worry about running out of wood. With each piece of wood, he placed on the embers his concern grew; he tried to hide it so as not to infect me with his worry. What he feared most was to lose me, but now that I was leaving he had to take care of himself and he seemed incapable of doing so, 4 winters ago he had almost gone mad but with the arrival of our meetings everything had changed, my presence had become necessary for him. As well as his in my life to succeed as Prima Ballerina.
With all this, the destiny that awaited us was inevitable. That same morning, he took me to the airport, promised me not to worry that the wood would not run out, and asked me to let him know as soon as I arrived in Lyon with Belmary and her mother. I remember that when I returned in January, to rejoin the Scalla Theater in Milan, the wooden furniture had already been burned. During some night the cold that would separate us forever. Probably while I was fucking like crazy in Navil's arms, he was burning the furniture, because maybe in the unconscious he knew it.
Birdy, interested in reading more about her grandmother's secret affair with her choreographer, continued flipping through the pages, but opened to page 93.
08- 06 -94
To my future heiress:
I know your beauty will overwhelm me, you will be so beautiful that I will want to cup your cheeks and tell you how proud I am of you. For you are beautiful, kind and noble. I will accompany you at every moment and your haunting intoxicating spirit, so similar to mine, will allow me to appear in every hour of your life to tell you that I continue to be with you, blooming in your smile and watching you from other galaxies.
My love for you does not cease, nor will it cease....
I wish to ask you to inebriate the music, let yourself go freely through wines and feasts, enjoy and enjoy every day, smile with strength, with fury, on the verge of madness. And dance, I know you will, for your blood and spirit will be marked by Terpsichore as it was with me. Whether you are my daughter, my granddaughter or great-granddaughter, whether you are the dancer who admires me and comes to these pages seeking to sip my soul, I ask you to dance and caress my memory feeling the wind, it is the wind that I leave behind me as I dance with my goddesses.
She, sitting in the wooden armchair, walked to the restaurant located by the main entrance of the opera house and ordered a hot chocolate, she walked with her grandmother's diary in her hands. When she returned she took from her locker a chamois blanket that her boyfriend had brought her, sweetly, since winter began, and with which she used to warm herself at Victor's house, and now at the theater. Birdy took a seat again and covered her legs with the blanket. She took a sip of hot chocolate.
Victor danced along with Leonard and Andie, and the girls from the troupe. Birdy continued reading.