Page 148 of The First Taste

“I’m Basil, or Bas. You all know me from your auditions. I’m the main choreographer here at NYB. Three facts about me: I’m married. I live in Florence three months out of the year. And I like seeing a lot of lift and extension in dance. Okay?”

He pauses. There are a couple of tentative yeses mumbled through our class.

Calum puts his hands behind his back, appearing pensive. He walks by the row of students on the other side of the room, observing each one as he paces. “I’m Calum. I’m your stage director for the spring season. I’m going to cut to the chase.” He smiles coldly, his eyes taking in everyone in the room. “As you can see, we’ve brought in thirty five of you to replace the departing cast. We only need twenty or twenty five of you. So this first week will be a test of sorts. I’m going to be separating the wheat from the chaff. Dead weight gets cut.”

My eyes widen. I glance at Ella. She looks at me briefly, her mouth tightening.

Calum pauses, looking at Basil. “Are you ready to get this class started?”

Basil cocks a brow. “I suppose so. Meesha, are you ready?”

He turns to the accompanist, a dark skinned young woman sitting behind the upright piano. Meesha nods. “Whatever you would like for me to play, Bas,” she replies in heavily accented English.

“Some Schubert,” he says, lifting his hands. She begins to play and Basil calls out to the class. “I hope you are all stretched out. Let us begin with simple plies.”

I clamber to my feet and position myself at the barre. Bas claps in time to the beat, explaining what to do.

“First position. And one, two, three, four. Now raise, two, three. Down, two, three, four. And lie, two, three, four… deeper, two, three, four.”

His words are meaningful of course, but they sort of fade into the background for me. For almost my entire life I’ve had someone chanting those words or something nearly identical to me. The teachers were old and young, black and white, male and female. It really doesn’t matter to me in the slightest.

No, I’m not worried about him. It’s Calum that I catch myself looking at in the mirror. It’s Calum who soon completes his circuit around the room. “That’s the worst line I think I’ve ever seen.”

He points to a ballerina at one of the barres set up in the middle of the room. “Straighten your back, stick your ass out, find your fucking center of gravity.”

The ballerina turns red and plies again, prompting Calum to shake his head. “You’re going to have to do better to earn your place.”

An unsettling silence fills the room for a minute. He frowns and moves on, stopping a few places down at a young Latina dancer. “I’m not sure you’ve ever done this before. Work on your posture. Extend your arm…”

The ballerina smiles anxiously and tries to emulate what Calum says. He shakes his head. “No. No! Stop, everyone stop. Look at me.”

He shoos away the dancers standing next to the Latina, taking first position.

It’s the first time that I’ve ever considered whether or not Calum actually knew what he was talking about, if I’m honest. But he is pure grace and holds the perfect form when he plies, slowly going through the motions. His arm arches, his legs bend, his back is straight as a steel beam.

My jaw drops a little. I had no idea that Calum was so versatile; honestly, from the looks of him, you would think that he was an elegantly shaped football star, not a dancer.

What a way to prove me wrong. Calum finishes the pose and then steps away from the barre, eyeing everyone. “Just so there is no confusion, I can do pretty much anything I ask you to do. So when I say bend back further or hold the position longer, I know it is possible.”

Bas seems unimpressed. “Thank you, Calum. Now, if we may resume class? And one, two, three, four…”.

It’s hard to tear my eyes away from Calum. I’m focused on not fucking up something so simple as a plie in front of him, though.

He casts his gaze over me and frowns. “Straighten your back. Push out your tailbone.” Mortified, I immediately turn red and try to correct myself. Calum lifts a brow. “Are you kidding? Act like you’re been in a fucking dance studio before.”

Tears well up in my eyes. I look straight ahead, desperate not to cry in front of everyone. At the same time, the class keeps moving through the plies.

Everyone is perfectly at attention. Calum keeps his harsh gaze on me for a few seconds. “Not good, but better.”

Then he turns his head, scoping out another dancer, and moves on. The whole class moves on, through plies and arabesques and fouetté turns. The entire time, Calum struts around the room, unhappy with each and every silhouette that he sees.

I’m the only one that gets multiple nasty comments, though.

“Your feet are all wrong. You should move nimbly instead of looking like Frankenstein’s monster.”

“No, no, no. When I say execute a grand jeté, I mean really go for it. Don’t be fucking hesitant. The audience has no time for you to be timid.”

He stops me mid-class, staring at my feet. “Go get a new pair of shoes from the shoe room. This is the New York Ballet, not a dance recital put on by medieval peasants. I expect you to dress like you belong here.”