The Dance Which Demands Everything, July 2019
​
“ Girls! You must hold your stomachs!” shouted the ballet teacher.
A ballet studio brings to memory the pitter-patter of old piano music, shuffling feet, and,
of course, shouting.
“Girls! Your STOMACHS!”
The ballet teacher stood before her pupils, ten or eleven girls in two staggered lines. Each pupil resembled the next: there was the same delicate frame along which ran lean, elongated muscles; there was the same black leotard, under which a pair of perfect pink tights was worn; there was even the same blank face, young and consumed. The only difference to be found amongst the girls lay in their hair. Some styled their buns straight back, piled high on top of their heads. Others preferred to part their hair into a low chignon. There was a few whose buns did not seem to fall into either the former or latter categories, with indistinct parts and flyways not yet banished by hairspray. Nevertheless, absolutely all the girls had their hair fashioned into buns, as is the custom.
“You can’t dance ballet with your stomach hanging out. Stomach stomach stomach!”
What lovely consonance! The girls were practicing an adagio; the grand pas de deux from the grandest ballet was ever so slowly persisting on the piano.
“Little pigs! Hold your stomachs! How can you dance adagio with your stomach hanging out!”
The little pigs were stretching their last limbs into an arabesque, balancing on only one little leg, and trying very hard to hold their stomachs in (which, by no coincidence, also happened to be very little).
“How can you hear such beautiful music and not hold your stomachs? Suck your stomach in! Your stomach, my god, suck it in!”
The music was indeed beautiful, painfully so. With each passing note the girls’ stomachs seemed to shrink more and more. Their identical black leotards began to sag with extra fabric; a slight strain was just detectable in the blankest region of their devoured faces.
The ballet teacher remained unmoved by these best of efforts. She demanded more. She demanded their stomachs.
“Suck in!”
The girls, by now standing in their final fifth positions, complied and tried to suck in some more. But, seeing as they had already been sucking in for a rather tedious 64 counts, and as they had such small stomachs to begin with, there was nothing left to suck in, nothing at all. The stomach of the girl in the center front row was the first to go: one final constriction of the abdominal muscles and it simply disappeared. Her intestines, small and large, were still intact, as were her kidneys, whose contours were now visible beneath her black, bloodstained leotard. As usually happens in a ballet class, the students tend to follow the movements of whoever is in front. Poof! The stomachs of the girls in the backline began to similarly vanish. When the few girls who still retained their stomachs looked in the mirror and saw what their classmates had achieved reflected back to them, well, one can guess what happened next.
“Good!” shouted the ballet teacher, apparently satisfied. “Now you can dance adagio! Maestro, from the top!”
The pianist began again to play the grand adagio. 5, 6, 7, 8 … a slight breathing of the arms and the girls were dancing once more; once more they were the ideal embodiment of classicism, of all things light and musical; once more they pertained to worlds more etherial than this one: this world where such repulsive realities like stomachs can be seen hanging about.
And the ballet teacher?
“Girls! You are not dancing with your soul. Give me your soul!”
Their stomachs have still not been found, but the review in the paper says they danced beautifully, with the utmost quality of heart.