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 for my suddenly doubtful mind that I was ready, because there was no time left. 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

14 OBT.ORG on the elastic band around my upper arm scattered, rolling all over the stage.

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.

“Holding — we’re holding for three minutes; curtain holding for three,” the stage manager commanded into her headset. “Dancers, clear the stage! Clear!”

All I could do was step aside. Get out of the way and forget about it. Wardrobe seamstresses — also appearing instantly, seemingly out of thin air — were snipping the remaining threads from my tutu and cutting off the other arm band so my classical costume would not be asymmetrical. They murmured reassuring coos in their motherly way as they fussed about me, re-creating the bubble of self-focus that had just been shattered by a tiny thread. There was no time, now, to finish my final preparations. The audience was already antsy at this unexplained delay. The shuffle and rumble of 2,000 bodies shifting in their seats and flipping through their programs, usually muted with reverent anticipation, was getting loud. The conductor had already gone down to the orchestra pit. I, along with the dozens of other dancers in the cast, had crowded into the wings while the stagehands worked. I prayed they’d found every bead. Even squished into the tight quarters of the upstage right wingspace, the circumference of my stiff, regal tutu kept the others at arms’ length. Its edges formed the border of my small world. The other dancers’ chatter and movement in the wings were dull to my senses. The overture punctured the hum backstage, pushing me into countdown mode as measured as a NASA takeoff, though without the option to abort mission. I realized that in the chaos, my partner and I had separated to our entrance-wings on opposite sides of the stage without wishing each other good luck. a polonaise in which the guests and entertainers at our wedding presented themselves to the King and Queen, and my Prince and I arrived with great fanfare, we nearly stumbled with the shock and effort of moving so slowly through the steps of the simple processional. Waiting in the wings after that first entrance, I listened to the other divertissments, trying to gauge what to expect from the conductor when it came time for our Grand Pas de Deux, the climax of the ballet. The uncertainty didn’t rattle me. Our preparations, hours of rehearsals in the studio, were not rigid. We would just breathe a little deeper, hold and stretch and extend a little further to fulfill the possibility of the empty space inside, and within, the notes. Arriving center stage to begin, it was clear from the first hushed, spare phrases of music that this would be the slowest we had ever danced the pas de deux. It was not easy to sustain the developpes (already precarious with only one-handed support), but we silently coordinated our timing to pace ourselves through each moment. Without a word, we agreed on how to take a hair longer to prepare for the pirouettes and fish dives, moderating the speed at which we’d move from place

to place on the stage, and broadening the simplest gestures — the offering of his hand, my acceptance of his support. We milked it for all it was worth, and drank in every note. We had only one performance — did the conductor know that? Was he slowing it down for us, to make it last, let us savor each delicious drop? My arms felt freer than ever before, thanks to the release of those scratchy arm bands. After the pas de deux, we each danced a solo variation, and I triumphantly concluded mine with the glee befitting a princess who had slept for years before her prince arrived to kiss her awake: arms thrown overhead, slightly open, fingers reaching to the sky.

Gavin Larsen, a former principal dancer with OBT, trained at the School of American Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet School. During her career, Larsen danced with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Alberta Ballet, and the Suzanne Farrell Ballet before joining OBT. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she teaches and writes about dance for magazines including Pointe, Dance Spirit, and Dance Teacher.

OUR PREPARATIONS, HOURS OF REHEARSALS IN THE STUDIO, WERE NOT RIGID. WE WOULD JUST BREATHE A LITTLE DEEPER, HOLD AND STRETCH AND EXTEND A LITTLE FURTHER TO FULFILL THE POSSIBILITY OF THE EMPTY SPACE INSIDE, AND WITHIN, THE NOTES.

As if to make up for the speed of the pre-curtain frenzy, the conductor drew out Tchaikovsky’s sublime music in slow motion. During our first entrance,

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