Status: Renovation in process

I Left My Heart in Moscow but My Love Waits in Pittsburgh

Anyone

I sat on the small, narrow wooden bench as Jordan came back with a rental pair of ice skates.

He sat on the narrow bench across from me that seemed entirely too small for his large frame. He propped my left foot on his lap and undid the laces of my sneakers and took it off. Then he put on the ice skate, tying it ever so carefully and then he repeated the same process with my other foot. There was something so loving in the way he did it. I’m sure I sound crazy; he took off my shoe and then put an ice skate on it. But there was an intimacy there. Something more.

“Do you always do this?” I asked with a smile.

“Only for you,” He kissed my forehead and then went to work to putting on his own skates.

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I trained my eyes on the mirror as I swept into the combination that Mr. B had just requested.

“Stop, stop.”

I froze mid-attitude en pointe, my back and shoulders twisted to face the mirror, not daring to relax or move from my pose.

“The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself,” Mr. B clapped his hands, “The mirror is not the audience. I am the audience.” He stood up from his chair in the front of the studio, in the middle of the wall of mirrors. Slowly, he hobbled himself to where I was and his long, tapered fingers grasped my chin and moved my face and my eyes from the mirror to meet his. “I am the one you should be looking at. I am the one that sees you.”

My mouth went dry and suddenly the touch of his fingers on my face felt too intimate. Too intrusive. I could only nod and try not to shake or fall off pointe.

“Good. Let’s start from the beginning,” He removed his hand from my chin and clapped his hands together and hobbled back to his chair, signaling for the pianist to start again.

I took a few shaky breaths, trying to calm the nerves that had settled into my stomach after the brief skin on skin contact. And I thought of all the girls who would literally kill to be here.

In this studio.

With Mr. B creating a ballet for you.

And how all I wanted was to run out of that studio.

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All I could think about was how my hands were sweating like crazy and my heart felt like it was going to break my ribs at the rate that it was slamming against my chest.

Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t fall. I repeated like a prayer over and over.

“Sveta relax,” Jordan murmured in my ear, one hand rubbing a tense shoulder and the other grasping mine. “It’s just ice skating.”

“I feel like I’m going to die,” I groaned, my breath coming out little puffs of smoke as the outdoor air turned chilly.

His arm slid around my waist, anchoring me to him, “Not on my watch. Just breathe, use your core and glide.”

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In 1980, at precisely 12:34 PM on any given day, except Sunday, you would find among the tourists at Lincoln Center the crown jewel of the New York City Ballet, Aliya Kapranova, running to the other side of Lincoln Center to the Met, where her beloved Misha was in a dual role of performer and artistic director. And today was no different.

Of course she didn’t always run as if the devil himself was chasing her. She used to stroll, maybe while eating an apple or reading a book, but one day, she looked up over her shoulder and in one of the several dizzyingly high windows of the David H. Koch Theater, she saw Mr. B staring at her, with an intensity that made her run. Ever since that day in the studio, she felt uncomfortable in his presence. And she felt uncomfortable in her own skin. She felt suddenly acutely aware of how she didn’t want to be anywhere near Mr. B and how literally thousands of girls would do unthinkable things to get a glimpse of the legendary Balanchine.

Today, as Aliya sprinted, she looked up to see Misha’s face and body plastered over the box office. His defined muscles rippling for all the world to gawk at, his handsome face looking off to the side yet somehow at you.

Mr. B wouldn’t let any of his dancers be used like this. Displayed as sex symbols. For Balanchine, ballet was above the visceral, physical messiness of sex. It was a neat kiss and nothing more and nothing less. A kiss. And there were many kisses in Sleeping Beauty. A kiss between parent and child. A kiss to seal the child’s fate. A kiss to waken the sleeping princess.

But Aliya didn’t want neat. She wanted the raw passion. She was tired of the neat, black and white conformity that she thought she escaped from the Soviet Union. She was meant to see the world in color and she was meant to live in a world of color.

She burst through the doors of the Met and rested her back against another advertisement as she waited for her heart to stop feeling like it was going to burst out of her chest.

“The new posters are just lovely, aren’t they?” A young girl asked from the other side of the advertisement.

“He looks just divine!” Another answered back, “Do you think it’s true? The rumors? That’s he’s you know, sleeping with the enemy?” She giggled.

“I hear that’s not all he’s sleeping with!” The first girl said in a hushed whisper that was consumed by more giggling.

The two girls left, cigarettes hanging out the side of their mouths and coffees in hand.

My heart stopped.

It could be anyone on the other side of the advertisement. Patrick Bissell was a star in his own right and his rockstar lifestyle, complete with the leather jacket he wore to classes, the constant stream of women and cocaine habit, was well known.

It could even be Sasha Godunov. A good friend of Misha and I’s from the Bolshoi, whose acting career and defection has made him famous worldwide. That and his love of alcohol that went beyond the good-natured Russian stereotype. ABT was filled with talented, male danseurs that seemed to overshadow the women in some cases. A complete contrast to Balanchine. Misha always hated that about Balanchine. For Balanchine, ballet was women and men were just props or accessories.

I don’t want to see you. Mr. B would constantly repeat during my rehearsals with Misha.

At ABT, Misha made it be known he was a star and that danseurs deserved to be in the front and they were meant to be seen.

With a deep breath, I stepped around to the other side of the advertisement. Unsure if I really wanted to know who was on the other side.

“Aliya!”

Before I could look at the advertisement in full, I whipped my head around to see Misha. His forehead covered in a thin sheen of sweat and his white shirt torn at the neckline to create a haphazard V-neck.

“Come with me! I want to show you something,” he called out to me, his arms waving and beckoning me to come.

My feet took my towards him. And with a quick glimpse over my shoulder at the advertisement, I saw only a flash of wavy, dark hair and my heart told me it could be Patrick. Patrick with his dark curls and not Sasha with his coiffed blonde hair. And I looked forward at the man I loved with his tousled brown waves.

And I didn’t dare look back at the advertisement to see if it would be his crystal blue eyes staring back at me and not Patrick’s brown eyes.

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“This is my favorite part so far,” I laughed as we sipped hot chocolate at the little stand next to the outdoor rink. The rental skates were returned and I doubt I would ever see them again.

Jordan laughed, “Ice skating isn’t so bad, once you practice. I’m sure you weren’t good at ballet at the start.”

I smiled, “I actually was!” I insisted, “People said they could tell I was going to be a star, when I first started. I think it was because of my mother and grandmother. I’m sure you were good at it, when you were young.”

“I’m Canadian. Of course I was.”

“It looks like you’re not even skating out there. It looks like you’re gliding or flying or something, not like you’re balancing on a thin piece of metal.”

“That’s the magic of it all. You don’t look like you’re balancing all your weight on your big toes.”

“I suppose. Do you ever think of what you would be doing, if you weren’t a hockey player?”

“I guess working on the sod farm.”

“Do you think we would have still found each other?”

“Of course. Fate brought us together in Pittsburgh. I’m sure fate would have brought us together in Thunder Bay or Moscow or wherever. I could have been traded or anywhere that day we met. We’re supposed to be together, in any life.”
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Here's the next chapter :D I really enjoy writing about the New York Ballet scene in the 80s. For all you ballet fans, I have another story that I'm working on called "Otherwise We are Lost." It's about Sergei Polunin and it's also a romance.

I hope you guys enjoyed this one and as always please leave a comment about what you think and any improvements I could be making :D!