Danced Her Heart Away

Chapter 01

                                               :۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:••:۞:

         Ballet was an art. And it was more than an art; it was also a sport. A terrible, wonderful, backbreaking sport. And anyone who said different was welcome to try performing a series of cabrioles (to leap and jump from the same leg) while clad in a ridiculously tight leotard, with their feet screaming at them to stop as they smashed into what should be impossible shapes against the wooden tips of pointe shoes.

        Learning a new number required a considerable amount of focus and care. It consisted of failed twirls, continuous falls on your butt, and a great amount of adjusting and readjusting your position. But most of all, it needed balance. If there was no balance, then there was no number. The dancer needed to somehow make it possible to sync these new steps to the music, while not losing their form, or tripping over the repeated steps.

        Ballet was a force to be reckoned with.

        One step. Cabriole.

        Two step. Coupé. (in which the dancer moves the dominant foot quickly off the floor and puts it in front of the other one)

        Last step. A grand twirl with my toes to their maximum tolerance as I arched my back and gracefully twisted along the tip of my left foot, my other leg angled toward my body. The world went by in a swirled blur, like a kaleidoscope of melded colors. I  perfectly timed my final spin with the last swell of the instrumental music. I came to a stop, with my arms out, while staring thoughtfully at some unknown point in the distance. I hoped, desperately hoped that not a single finger was out of place, that my feet weren’t an inch away away from their proper form.

        I held that stance for a good five seconds, but it felt like hours. My arched feet were starting to ache a slow type of pain, and my arms began to shake ever so slightly. I cringed as I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a strand of light brown hair come free from my bun and gently float down, plastering itself to my sweat-slicked cheek.

        The scholarship administrator was taking her sweet time reviewing my form, and after another five seconds of pure hell, the woman finally released me from my prison of a pose.

        “Alright,” she said. The word wasn’t even halfway through her lips before I sighed in relief and returned to my normal posture. I finally got a good look at the woman, who called herself Madame Janelle. She had this awful auror of power that surrounded her, and her face was devoid of any laughlines. She stared me down with attentive dark eyes as I hesitantly descended the steps of the stage, my footsteps never louder than that moment. They seemed to obnoxiously echo throughout the empty theater, demanding every resident of their attention.

        She made a beckoning movement with her hand, and when I did approach her, her eyes overlooked my frame. I bit the inside of my cheek as I saw her eyes flash with disappointment as she jotted something down on her clipboard. Her pale hair was pulled back in a strict bun, not a single flyaway in sight, and her lips lacked any color other than chapped. She clutched her pen like it was a sword, and in some ways, it was.

        If she gave me a bad review, or a review that basically said anything other than “flawless”, then she might as well had driven that very pen into my stomach. My single chance on attending Roeville Academy for the Creative Arts was depending on this woman and her stupid pen, so it was more than a sword. She was practically carrying an atomic bomb.

        After a painful while of her writing utensil scratching against paper, she sighed, quite dramatically, and gave me another look. I thought she was trying to aim for a much more humanesque emotion by pulling the lower half of her fae back into this really weird clown-grin, but all she managed to accomplish was getting me even more freaked out.