These two bunhead pics are of me, circa early 1980s. Oh how I adored the elegance and beauty of ballet! Let’s get all posh and sip a cuppa tea along with today’s “trina” tales. You can pour yourself some hot Lipton if you’d prefer. But given that I’m talking about not wanting to be normal, I figure you might be up for a cool beverage with a spicy, exotic zing.
Chai Iced Tea
8 single serving teabags of your favorite chai tea (I like Trader Joe’s Organic Spiced Rooibos Ruby Red Chai Tea. It’s caffeine free and loaded with antioxidants.)
4 cups pure, filtered water
3 cups unsweetened, non-dairy milk (I like coconut, cashew, almond, or soy. Real cow’s milk works, too.)
1/2 cup raw honey (adjust to your sweet-tooth)
Boil the water in a teapot. Pour into large (heatproof) pitcher. Stir in the honey. Add teabags. Let steep at least 5 minutes or until it gets as strong as you like it. (Remember to make it extra potent, because we’ll be diluting it with the milk.) Remove teabags and add your “milk” of choice. Chill. I mean the tea. In the refrigerator. When it’s cold, pour yourself some over a cup of ice. Now is your chance to chill. Sit back, relax, and enjoy your Chai Iced Tea as you read about the budding ballerina below.
Enjoy this excerpt from
by Kristi Lynn Davis
When I was thirteen, Skye realized her dream of creating a serious ballet company in residence, the New York City Ballet of the Detroit suburbs, so-to-speak, which she christened “The Southeast Ballet Theatre.” No doubt she intentionally and strategically spelled theatre with an “re” instead of an “er” thereby lending an air of foreign superiority to the title and making it instantly known this was a major dance force with which to be reckoned. This fledgling troupe was intended to be as rigorous and intense as a real professional ballet company. That other Dolly Dinkle tap and jazz fluff paid the bills at the Dallas School of Dance, but the Southeast Ballet Theatre was now Skye’s true passion and artistic mission.
Company placement was to be determined by audition. In order to avoid scaring away dancers from other schools, the evaluation was held offsite in a public recreational center. Having never auditioned before, I was plagued with anxiety. But I desperately wanted to be in that company.
On the big day, I donned my pink tights and my black, sleeveless leotard. I twisted my ponytail into a tidy bun secured with an extensive selection of hairpins and ensnared in a light-brown, cafeteria-style hair net, to prevent any rebel strands from escaping. My hair was tugged back so tightly I appeared as slant-eyed as a woman with a Hollywood face lift. For the final touch, I shellacked my head with a can of Aquanet, the cheapest and most powerful, impenetrable hair spray known to womankind. Aquanet was the secret weapon of ballerinas and old ladies alike. With their coifs doused in the mixture, grannies could walk two miles to church in a windstorm and still arrive looking as if they’d just left the beauty salon. Ballerinas could spin like a tornado; their hair remained unshaken and as perfect as when they’d entered the room. I discovered, in my over-zealous application of the magic potion, that one too many sprays of Aquanet turned a hairdo into a helmet.
Satisfied that my hair wasn’t going anywhere, I headed over to the Recreational Center. The place was drab, dreary, and deserted. I was about an hour early, so I decided to use the extra time to warm up. Stretching turned out to be a redundant gesture, however, as my nervousness made my muscles as loose and limp as a strand of cooked spaghetti. The other dance hopefuls started straggling in, and soon the entire studio wreaked of Aquanet. (A whiff of the miracle solution transports me right back to my childhood dance days.) As the bewitching hour neared, and I finally pulled out my pointe shoes, which I hadn’t wanted strangling my toes any longer than was necessary. In my jittery state, I tried several times before tying the laces properly. After adjusting the seams on my tights to ensure that they were running straight up the backs of my legs, I was ready. There was no turning back now.
The audition was run as if we were complete strangers to Skye, even though every one of the ballerinas trying out was from the Dallas School. Skye referred to us not by name but by the specific number each of us had been given to pin onto our leotards. The atmosphere throughout the evaluation was somber, quiet, and tense; the minutes ticked by like I was waiting for water to boil. But throughout the experience I controlled my nerves enough to concentrate and pick up the ballet combinations. What a pleasant relief when the afternoon was finally over.
A few days later, a formal acceptance notice arrived in the mail: “CONGRATULATIONS! You have been selected to be a member of the SOUTHEAST BALLET THEATRE, as a Major Dancer. As you know, it is a new company, and with your help we plan on making it the finest company in the Mid-West.” Not only had I been accepted into the “SBT,” but I had also been selected for the Major Company, while the “minor” dancers were relegated to the Apprentice Company. Lest anyone forget their status, each subdivision had its own required uniform: The Major Dancers donned royal blue leotards while the Apprentices wore pale blue. Naturally, pink tights, pointe shoes, and a waistband made of quarter-inch elastic (used as an indicator of hip misalignment) were mandatory for everyone. Dressed accordingly, we rehearsed each and every Wednesday night for three hours. The attendance policy was strict: a measly two absences were allowed per year.
I arrived promptly, properly dressed, and a bit apprehensive for the initial meeting of the Southeast Ballet Theatre, for the first order of business was the dreaded “weigh-in.” The ballerinas lined up like cattle being sized for market value, except in this case, bigger was not better. Skye stood, clipboard in hand, recording the official pounds and ounces of each dancer, measuring their worth by weight, or lack thereof. My five-foot-seven-inch frame housed a ninety-four-pound weakling. Even though I was skinny and passed inspection, standing on that scale to have my tonnage assessed was nerve-wracking, embarrassing, and felt like an invasion of my privacy.
With the amplitude of each dancer duly noted, we began work on our first annual production of the world’s most pervasive ballet, that Christmas-time favorite with a title that makes every man shiver: The Nutcracker. I was familiar with the ballet, as my mother once took me to downtown Detroit to see a professional rendition. I didn’t understand why the little girl, Clara, would want an ugly, nut-crushing soldier toy for Christmas instead of a pretty baby doll, but few ballet stories did make sense to me. I relied heavily on the written explanation in the program book.
Skye cast me in the “Waltz of the Flowers,” the grand, climactic number performed by the “corps de ballet” (a.k.a. the “ensemble”). In the dance, we did a lot of chasing each other around in circles. The cascade of floral tulle was quite lovely to watch, but the stampede of wooden toe shoes resulted in unwanted knocking sounds masking Tchaikovsky’s famous score. Silencing our steps was a skill in and of itself.
I longingly watched as other dancers were chosen for the passionate Spanish dance, the strenuous, gymnastic, Russian dance, and the exotic Arabian dance where supple girls bent their bodies in ways nature never intended. My special role was one of six “flutes” in the Danse des Mirlitons. It didn’t have the spice, sultriness, or shock value of the other dances, but I loved the section where we crossed arms, held hands, and piqued as a synchronized unit. As is the prerogative of the Artistic Director, Skye gave herself the sweetest part of all, the Sugar Plum Fairy. During rehearsal one night, a journalist from the Suburban Press and Guide took photos; of all the fascinating performers, only two other flutes and I were immortalized in the newspaper.
Before long, I moved up in the ranks, rising to the top like cream, eventually even replacing Skye as the most famous of all fairies. In addition to taking over her Sugar Plum role, I played Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) in Sleeping Beauty, pricking my finger on the spindle of the spinning wheel and falling dramatically to the floor. I played dead for so long before Prince Charming awoke me with a kiss that my leg actually did go to sleep, and I was well into my solo before the feeling in my appendage returned.
There were plenty of talented girls at the studio to play the female characters in our ballets, but it was such a struggle to find qualified dancers for the lead male roles that sometimes, at great expense, Skye even shipped in a professional. With such a dire shortage of testosterone around the place, the Dallas women were always on the lookout for unsuspecting guys they could lure in and snatch up for partners. Dads, brothers, the mailman, or any able-bodied male, for that matter, didn’t dare set foot in the door of the studio, or the next thing they knew they were on stage in tights and a dance belt (the equivalent of a jock strap) bench pressing a teen ballerina. Watching a grown man attempt to do ballet wasn’t half as shocking as seeing him wear tights. I never did get used to that; it was impossible not to stare at that bulge. It takes a secure fellow to tiptoe around on stage for an audience with his rear end and private parts shrink-wrapped for all to see.
That was the terrible fate of Roger, a poor, unwitting, thirty-something, long-distance runner, who made the mistake of joining our ballet class to improve his flexibility and, much to his wife’s dismay, ended up as the Fairy King Oberon in our production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Luckily, with his taut and toned physique, he looked about as good in tights as could be expected of any man.
Playing Queen Titania, I was Roger’s partner in the ballet, and although he couldn’t dance to save his soul, he was tall, muscular, strong, and could grab me by the waist and lift me over his head on cue. He held me with a death grip; my back had the bruises of his fingerprints to prove it, but at least he didn’t let me fall. As King Oberon, Roger had to do some of that ballet-pantomime-acting in the show. I never did figure out what he was communicating, but I think he was supposed to be mad, because he shook his fist a lot. We attended the same church, and, when I saw him there, I blushed under the eyes of God, embarrassed that I had a pretty good idea what his family jewels looked like, having seen him in tights.
Roger also danced with Belinda, another one of our prima ballerinas, and was partnering her on stage the day it happened. No one could stop talking about it. There she was, spinning in circles, her back to his stomach, legs wrapped around his waist, arms high in the air and back arched like a hood ornament, when her breasts just plopped right out of her costume. Skye laughed hysterically. Belinda seemed to take it all in stride, but I knew if that ever happened to me I would keel over and die. Perhaps the cortisone shots she received to assuage her aching feet had numbed her feelings of modesty as well.
Like Belinda and the rest of the Dallas elite, I practically lived at the studio, taking classes four nights a week and attempting to teach tap to rambunctious toddlers on Saturdays. Dance was now my life. It gave me a place in the world. To me, the human race could be separated into two categories: dancers and normal people. Once I dubbed myself a dancer, I never wanted to be normal again.
Don’t settle for normal. You’re no average joe! Like a Chai Iced Tea, your life deserves to have zest and zing. How are you going to spice up your life and do something extraordinary? Let us know in the comments below!
Thanks for reading. Chassé back here next week for more Long Legs and Tall Tales.
Pirouette on,
Kristi
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