CREATURE

・chapter 5・

It was around four in the afternoon when Asya shouldered her way out of her last rehearsal for the day. She stepped out into the dancer's lounge in the upper levels of the Opera House, adjusting the strap of her bag over her shoulder. She had about an hour to kill before she needed to head back to the theatre to prepare for the evening's performance, and was going to go home for a quick shower and a bite to eat.

She scanned the lounge for any sign of Julian, peeking down the long corridor that led to the elevators. She spotted him leaning against the wall next to the noticeboards, seemingly watching a rehearsal through a glass-paned door that led to one of the training studios.

That's strange, she thought. Most rehearsal slots ended at four. Probably private coaching, then.

'There you are.' Asya greeted, brushing up against her friend's shoulder. 'We should get going if-'

'Look.' Julian whispered urgently, jerking his head in the direction of the studio.

Curious to see what had her friend so excited, Asya leaned forward and peeked through the door. Behind the glass she saw the artistic director, Bastian, and one of the company's ballet masters, Christopher Walsh, running a rehearsal. They were working with none other than the Russian dancer she'd met earlier that day, the illustrious Roman Zharnov.

Despite feigning nonchalance to Julian when he asked about her short conversation with him, she was a little curious as to what all the fuss was about. Besides, it's not every day she'd get to see a prized Bolshoi principal dancer work, certainly not from up close.

Zharnov was preparing for a pirouette combination, finding his weight placement over his supporting leg before he started spinning. The turns were immaculate despite their neck-breaking speed, and in a trick that made her breath halt in her throat, he finished them with... A backbend?

Long before she could figure out how he'd done it, he stepped into a deadly string of glissades, jetés, coupés and entrechats that nearly made her dizzy. She could only hear a muffled version of the music through the glass, but could tell that his rhythm was terrifyingly close to faultless despite the quick tempo of the combination.

Walsh barked something about timing as the Russain dancer started a jump sequence, a gravity-defying, brain-damning, head-spinning jump sequence. Again, she had no idea how he pulled it off. The directional changes, tricky aerials and triple rotations required a skill-level few male dancers possessed and dared use. Technique was one thing, but dealing with mid-air disorientation and unnatural contortions in big jumps, quite another.

But between Walsh's yapping and Bastian's sidelong corrections, Zharnov landed the jumps one after the other without faltering even slightly. She knew that came down to sound ballet technique, which showed in his sweeping footwork, and of-course, the Russian-trained hands. Soft, expressive, dynamic and placed to absolute perfection.

She wasn't easily starstruck, not at all. She'd spent the bulk of her life dancing, having started when she was three with some of the best teachers in the world at her disposal. She was a member of one of the most prestigious companies in the world, and frequently rubbed shoulders with some of the industry's finest.

But truthfully, she'd never seen anything like that.

She felt a little better knowing that both a top-tier ballet master and the artistic director were running the rehearsal, which had to mean that Zharnov was a handful. Watching him assemble stunt after stunt with a bare-boned tenacity that verged on supernatural, she had a feeling he was probably more than just a handful.

Bastian stopped the pianist with a wave of his hand, getting up from his foldout chair to correct Zharnov's placement in his turns. She couldn't hear what the artistic director was saying, but judging by his demonstration she assumed it had something to do with the way he transitioned into his turns and not so much the rotations themselves.