FEATURE
PLACES: A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF DANCING IN THE SLEEPING BEAUTY BECAUSE SOMETIMES, DANCER WARM-UPS BACKSTAGE CAN CAST A SPELL OVER THE NEXT ACT BY GAVIN LARSEN
Gavin Larsen as Aurora and Jon Drake as Prince Florimund in The Sleeping Beauty. Photos by Blaine Truitt Covert.
“PLACES, PLEASE. PLACES FOR THE TOP OF SLEEPING BEAUTY! PLACES! WE’RE AT PLACES!” Everyone around me was abuzz with activity, but I was completely engrossed in my head and my body. I was fine-tuning, re-checking, and re-fine-tuning every single detail, repeating carefully each step I was about to take. I had to feel that I had each one perfectly in my body before the curtain went up, even though I’d already spent dozens upon dozens of hours rehearsing them in the studio, and had known that sense of perfect execution. I needed to feel, now, at the moment of truth, that each movement was at my fingertips, hovering, ready to answer my commands right on cue. I needed proof 14
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for my suddenly doubtful mind that I was ready, because there was no time left.
on the elastic band around my upper arm scattered, rolling all over the stage.
The other dancers kept a distance from me, giving me an invisible circle of space, a sort of buffer zone with an electric fence no one would cross. At the stage manager’s “places” call, my brain said to do the first step of my variation one more time: from tendu arabesque, I stepped into sousous, perfectly balanced from absolute tipto-toe. Plie in fifth position, relevé passé, and — snap! The beaded arm band of my costume, a gloriously embellished white tutu fit for a princess (I was about to dance Princess Aurora in Act 3 of The Sleeping Beauty) had torn apart as I lifted my arms overhead. Dozens of tiny, round, clear plastic beads that had been strung
Oh! With my laser-sharp focus broken, my body froze, and I stared blankly at the floor, momentarily unable to think. Milliseconds passed before I looked up and around for someone to tell me what to do, since I felt incapable of switching gears into crisis management. The stage manager — uncannily aware of everything happening on her stage and able to react with triggerlike speed — leapt into action. Three broom-wielding stagehands magically appeared, swiftly and efficiently corralling every last bead into dustbins. Even one lone invisible rolling object under the dancers’ feet would be dangerous and disastrous.
