Free The Art of Falling by Kathryn Craft Page B

advertising in America, no?”
    “Okay, let’s see. Smoldering athleticism …she’s talking about you, Dmitri. She must want you bad—”
    Mitch and Lars howled; Dmitri flushed.
    “… style which fingers the edges of human kinetic potential —”
    Dmitri and I caught each other’s eyes and smiled. That one meant a lot to him.
    “… a broad range of subject matter…a disparate group of bodies —”
    “Desperate bodies? This is good, no? Shows hunger for movement?” Dmitri said. His wordplay raised a hearty laugh from the group.
    I set down my toast. I had already started to feel queasy when I heard the word “broad.” For the most part, Dmitri had chosen his dancers for their lack of disparity. The men were tall and thin, the women a few inches shorter and thin—except Tina, who was very short and thin. Thin, thin, thin, the dance world mandate. The American ideal.
    Then there was me. Dmitri’s movement inspired a fierce confidence in my body—from the inside looking out, I felt equal to any challenge—but critical evaluation of my performance brought back all my fears. Mine was the desperate body. I didn’t want to have food in my mouth if I was about to hear MacArthur say my chunky bottom was responsible for creating her sense of the company’s disparateness.
    Although she hardly seemed finished, Karly folded the paper and dropped it onto the couch. “It’s all good news. So, who’s using the phone?”
    Mitch reached it first and called Evan. While the others waited their turn, I snuck off to the kitchen for a private audience with the article. I scanned down to where Dmitri had underlined “a disparate group of bodies.” The critic wrote:
    Mr. DeLaval uses his long torso to great advantage; opposing forces of expansion and contraction that might seem minimal within another body become a bold statement on his. Others in the company are similarly lithe and strong, but two are so different that the viewer searches for meaning. Without an emotional context, one can’t tell if Mr. DeLaval is making a statement with his casting. My eye was drawn to the larger girl in the second piece, for instance—her Amazonian strength, her mercurial fluidity. Was the petite blond meant to be her daughter? Her incomplete self? Only time will tell whether Mr. DeLaval can continue to generate the kind of material that will make this ensemble shine.
    I let out my breath. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. When I looked up, Dmitri was leaning against the doorway of the kitchen. Even at home, in this casual pose, he looked like a god. By extension—because he had chosen me—I could imagine a bit of goddess in me. He nodded toward the paper and said, “Amazon mother is good image. We will show her.”
    Those last three words juiced me up enough to make a call of my own. When the phone was free, my Amazon fingers flew across the keypad.
    “Hello?” Her voice sounded muffled, like she was speaking into a pillow. I glanced at the clock. It was only six a.m. On a Sunday.
    “Mom, it’s me.” Pride—mine and my mom’s, all tangled together—swelled within my breast until it pushed the words from my mouth in a tumble. “I can’t wait to tell you any longer—I made it into a company! Dance DeLaval. We’re based down in Philadelphia, at the University of the Arts.”
    “Well, I know that much.”
    “You do?”
    “Bebe told me.”
    Of course she had. I had moved back into the little room above her studio on South Tenth. Bebe had let me have it back on one condition: I swear an oath not to give up on my performing career. “I’ve made it this time, Bebe,” I’d said, the words so significant their conveyance required no more than a whisper. I told her all about meeting Dmitri, the audition, and his three-year residency right here in Philadelphia.
    It was a moment I should have shared with both my mothers.
    “I thought you’d be more excited.”
    “Bebe called weeks ago. The