Free Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet by Jenifer Ringer Page A

him, trying to reassure him. I needed a calm partner. It was too late to worry about blue hands.
    “Places, please,” we heard the stage manager call. Feeling unreal, I went to stand in my place at the front of one of the two diamond formations. The audience noise dwindled to silence. The stage lights went blue. For our excerpt, we were starting with the Waltz section. While the other girls turned and walked offstage, trailing their hands behind them as I had done as a student at Washington Ballet, I would stay onstage, repeating the famous arm movements that began the ballet, and wait for Arch to come and tap me on the shoulder so that we could begin our dance together.
    Just feet away from me, on the other side of the lowered curtain, the strings burst forth with Tchaikovsky’s opening chords, like cries of the heart. My stomach rose into my neck, making it impossible to breathe for a moment. I raised my right hand toward the lights, a gesture that half reached, half shielded. Then the curtain rose with a quiet, zipping hum. I felt the breeze from the rising curtain blow my skirts gently around my ankles.
    A strange thing happened when I looked out from the New York State Theater stage for the first time. The audience looked warm and inviting. The large jewel-like lights placed along the different audience levels glowed gently. The floor felt soft under my pointe shoes. My nerves suddenly left me, and I felt comfortable, at home. I felt a gladness rise up in me, and I knew that I was going to be able to dance with ease and confidence.
    The whole performance was a joy that ended all too quickly. Arch and I danced like soul mates, everything going perfectly. I made my double pirouettes and got through those
jetés battus
that Suki had been worried about. I felt as if I were flying, lifted up on soaring winds. I wanted to do it again, right away if possible.
    I could hardly sleep that night, reliving the entire day over and over in my head. After the experience of dancing on that stage, I craved a repeatand started to dream of being asked into City Ballet right away. Yes, I was young. But I thought I was ready. I wanted to be a City Ballet dancer.
    And then the next week started, and it was as if nothing had happened. I was back to the normal routine. However, Peter was apparently impressed enough with my performance that he wanted to change my casting in the Workshop performance. To my surprise, Susan informed me that I would now be learning the principal women in both the second and third movements of Balanchine’s
Symphony in C
.
    I was of course excited by this, but also a little daunted. It didn’t mean I was going to perform the roles, but there was a good chance I would if Peter had asked that I learn them. I knew Susan was skeptical that I was strong enough, so I felt that I had a lot to prove. Also, the girls already doing these parts were currently the unspoken stars of my class; Elizabeth was dancing the third movement, and Monique was dancing the second movement. Both of them intimidated me; when I watched them dance I saw everywhere I was lacking.
    I pushed myself, though, and felt that I could rise to the occasion. I was used to succeeding, and after the performance at the State Theater, I had more confidence.
    Then disaster struck.
    It was springtime, and a few weeks before Workshop. I had just turned sixteen and was taking Susan’s class. She had stopped the class to give me a correction on my
ballonnées
, scissorlike pointe steps. I was trying to do them sharper and cleaner and stronger. Something happened, and I kicked my working leg so hard that it pulled my standing leg out from under me and I fell.
    Embarrassed, I got up, but I couldn’t put weight on my foot. I looked at Suzy, who cared intensely about her students. She looked horrified.
    “Sit down,” she told me. “We’ll get some ice.”
    She looked very upset, and I sat against the wall under the barre, trying not to cry. I was brought a