Otherwise We are Lost

The air felt electric.

Anxiety, excitement, nervous energy rolled off of all the dancers.

Just another day at the office.

“Lara, did you hear? He’s coming here!” The lithe, blonde-haired, blue-eyed ballerina was bubbling over with excitement over this very vague bit of news.

“Natasha, stop fidgeting,” I muttered as I finished pinning the last bit of red flowers onto the front of the costume that was layers of black tulle and sparkle. At the last moment, Igor Zelensky deemed the Black Swan costume too dark, too serious. They needed vibrancy. It wasn’t a funeral after all. Typical Igor. “And no, I didn’t. Who is he?”

“Sergei Polunin! He resigned from the Royal Ballet in January-”

Sergei.

Almost ten years since he left and he still made my hands shake and my heart feel like it was going to break my ribs with each beat.

“I knew he was in Moscow doing classes with the Bolshoi, I thought he had already signed with them,” Natalia continued rambling, “But he’s here! He’s coming here! Can you believe it? He’s like THE dancer of our generation.”

“Your generation, Nata. I’m not a dancer anymore.” And I haven’t been for a long time. But dance was something in my bones, in my very being. If I couldn’t be a dancer, at least I could work in the production side of the Company. Igor was the one who noticed me, when no one else did. He was the one who noticed that I was the fastest one to sew my shoes and that the girls were paying me to tailor their leotards or make custom ones for them.

“You’re good, Larysa Romanovna, you're passionate but you're not talented. You won’t make it into a company. You know that, but you have other talents.”

Blunt. That’s one way to describe Igor. As much as the words hurt, he knew that my passion could only take me so far. And I needed to know it too.

“Just because you don’t go on stage every night, doesn’t mean you’re not a dancer, Lara. Do you go to the adult classes?”

I did. But for some reason, I wanted to keep to it myself like it was my dirty little secret. A shame I didn’t want the world to know, “When is Polunin going to start coming here? Do you know?”

“Oh who knows, he’s the ‘bad boy of ballet’ now. Maybe we won’t even see him until opening night.”

“We’re from the same town,” I confessed, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. In a way, it was a peace offering. Giving up that little part of my past instead of admitting the fact that I still held onto an impossible dream. “We did gymnastics together and then danced together in Kiev. Except he went to the Royal Ballet and I didn’t.”

“Oh? Did you ever get to dance with him?” Natalia’s interest piqued. Sergei was very much an enigma in the already secretive ballet world. Covered in tattoos and outspoken about his cocaine habit, Sergei was in every sense of the word, a bad boy.

“Yes,” I smiled at the memory. Even then he was different, there was a quality to his movements. With him, it was more than just simply picking up your leg into an arabesque. It was art. He didn’t just move. There was something ineffable about him that made you hold your breath.

“And?”

“He was very good. Even at a young age, it was obvious he was something special,” I tacked on the overskirt onto the tutu, not quite satisfied with the look of the reds and indigos against the black tulle. “Igor said he would be coming in today to look at this. He said the original costume was too much like a funeral. You’re supposed to be Odile. The black swan,” I groaned.

“Larysa Romanovna, you really mustn’t complain when we have guests around,” Igor’s deep voice seemed to fill the room and cause my spine to seize up into a ramrod straight posture, “They’ll get the wrong idea of this place.”

“Ah, but Igor, I am not really a guest, am I? I’m part of the family now.” His voice. It’s been so long since I heard his voice, now rasped with cigarette smoke and age. Even with my back facing the both of them, I knew it had to be Sergei.

Seryozha

“Correct, part of the family,” Igor paused, “Both sides actually, like Lara here. She’s our costumier and sometimes hair dresser and makeup artist at both the Stanislavsky Music Theatre and Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre.”

I turned around, plastering a smile on my face, “It’s nice to see you again,” I managed to choke out, extending my hand to him. “It’s been so long.”

“Yes, Lara,” he tested out the name on his lips. The Russian diminutive on his Ukrainian tongue, Lesya he used to call me. Lesya like a soft caress or a gentle kiss. “Too long,” He smiled one of those slow smiles that promised more than it should and he shook my hand. “Much too long.”