Your lungs pound and your calf tightens as you spin: one, two, three times around. Then land, pas de bourree, sashay, jeté, across the floor. Rivulets of sweat trace the contours of your neck, stream down the small of your back. Human exertion—from you and your classmates (or rather, your competitors)—fogs up the mirrors, turns into a thick musk that chokes the studio.
You wipe the dampness from your upper lip with the sleeve of your shirt. Grab your water bottle and take a sip. Trying to quell that deep pit of hunger.
Since arriving in New York City five months ago, you can’t seem to shake this all-encompassing cloud of want and need and desire and desperation. Of how talented everyone is here. Of how hard you’re trying—to catch up, to hang on, to do the right things, to be the best.
Your instructor calls out—it’s your group’s turn to cross the floor again. You move in synchronicity; a mass of supple bodies and taut limbs. Determined eyes and matted hair. Graceful hands and feet. (You can always tell a true dancer by their hands and feet.) An absence of sound, soaring into the air then landing noiselessly. Your body contorts into impossible shapes, but the pain never shows on your face; the effort always disguised.
And then, as you finish the combination, your teacher beckons specifically to you. This has to be the moment you’ve been waiting for. Finally, she will acknowledge you—your work ethic and intensity. Maybe she’s even going to invite you to audition for her company.
As you draw near her, she looks you straight on, lowers her voice and asks: “Do you even like dancing? Because it doesn’t show.”
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Melissent Zumwalt is an artist and administrator who lives in Portland, Oregon. She has been recognized as a Best of the Net finalist and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Arkana, Hawaii Pacific Review, Hippocampus, Mud Season Review, Rappahannock Review, and elsewhere.