Corpse de Ballet by Ellen Pall Read Free Book Online Page A

went to the choreographer. Into Ruth’s ear, she murmured a few inaudible words.
    Ruth turned back to Lily. “I meant that Miss Havisham is middle-aged, of course,” she said, her tone (alas) more annoyed than apologetic.
    Lily’s gaunt cheeks drew in more sharply than ever at this explanation, which Juliet felt she must certainly take as a further indignity; but she only bowed slightly to Ruth—a very measured, very noble bow—and said nothing. The session proceeded, with the villagers reassembled to polish the transition. By the time Greg Fleetwood slipped quietly back in, tossing a smile to Juliet, murmuring a word in the ears of several dancers around the room, then departing with a quick, wry salute in Ruth’s direction, the tension had dissipated substantially. Promptly at three, Ruth curtly thanked the dancers and dismissed them.
    An immediate tumult ensued as they prepared to hare off, most of them to lunch (generally ingested, with great self-consciousness, in the dancers’ lounge on the second floor), a few of the soloists and principals to concentrated sessions with Victorine Vaillancourt or other instructors. Most had bags in which they carried shoes, bottles of water, morsels of nutritive matter, cold pills and the like. These had been left all around the perimeter of the room, and the dancers now hurried to them. They crouched to shove them full of wadded tissues and other detritus. Several of the women pulled out shawls or sweatshirts and wrapped them around their bony hips or shoulders before venturing from the steamy studio into the merely baking corridors. Elektra Andreades, who had settled herself with Hart Hayden near the sandbox (or whatever it was) through the last part of the session, slipped her legs into a pair of bright pink leg-warmers. Hayden, after a certain amount of gathering this and that into his bag (he seemed to have spread himself out liberally over the floor around them), fed her a tiny morsel—a cornflake? a sunflower seed?—kissed her casually on the side of the neck and rose to join the crowd streaming out the door. He threw a farewell smile to Juliet as he passed her.
    At the same time, Ryder Kensington bore down on his wife from across the studio. He crouched and initiated a brief, murmured conversation. Thirty seconds later, he strode off again to leave the studio, looking to Juliet somewhat less angry than before.
    On the other side of the wooden box, meanwhile, Lily Bediant listened as Mlle. Vaillancourt spoke softly to her. Mlle. Vaillancourt had remained standing throughout the end of the session, and Juliet wondered if getting up from a chair was so difficult for her that she avoided it. Her attitude was gentle but earnest as her words to her protégée flowed on; Lily, still stiff-backed but calmer, nodded occasionally, her face a careful, impassive mask. When Patrick Wegweiser crossed the room to join them, Juliet was sure it was to make apologies for his employer.
    If so, Lily was not interested. She turned her head away as he arrived, avoided his eyes while he spoke, and for answer only glared at him briefly in silence. Mlle. Vaillancourt, clearly disapproving of this lapse in good breeding, put her arm on Patrick’s and drew him away with her toward the front of the room. Lily then knelt by the dance bag she had left near the wooden box and, with the utmost dignity, blew her long nose one quivering nostril at a time.
    Across the box, looking not at all ruffled by her conversation with her husband, Elektra Andreades was refastening a pigtail for Mary Christie. Mary turned and said something to Elektra that made her laugh as she gathered up the rest of her things. Then, dance bags slung over their shoulders, arms twined around each other’s waists, dark, graceful heads tilted together as if Petipa had so arranged them, they left the room together.
    Gradually, the vast, echoing studio emptied out. One of the last to leave was