Strip Read Free Page A

see you again?” She smiled. My father could have adjusted her slightly protruding eye teeth. I could tell by her openness that she liked men, a lot. She said a lot of guys who started late had careers. I couldn’t believe we were talking about free classes, talking about careers, like it was a possibility and not just a dream. My whole world was starting to shift. I was involved in something I absolutely loved.
    â€œKeep swimming,” Lisa said, “for now.”
    So there I was plié, tendu with the beginner adults, women and the two men I had seen on the stairs. Then Lisa threw me into a room of little girls balancing on tippytoes, learning the syllabus, for a moment, and after that into seasoned recreational adults with timid wrists and tight fingers, until she figured I could rub shoulders with those who had hoped to be dancers one day, and along with them classes of serious teens with talent, strength, discipline and their dreams still in front of them. This all meant that some nights I was at the studio for up to four hours. The girls needed a male partner for their exams, and the adults wanted partners to make class more challenging. And all I wanted to do was dance. A simple port de bras at the barre was enough to satisfy the craving. I couldn’t wait to get to the studio, change, stretch the soreness out of my muscles and see how much further I could turn and how much more controlled I could be when I leapt. At night I dreamt I was so much better. When I swam I reached for the end of the pool; now when I danced, I reached for the heavens.
    â€œJust turn,” Lisa shouted, while I made myself dizzy with tour en l’air . “Worry about your technique later, just get around for God’s sake. Be careless.”
    Classmates started to recognize me as a dancer. And if I recognized them on the street, they’d introduce me as “one of the dancers from the studio.” It seemed unfair that because of my sex I was fast-tracked. Being called a dancer can be like a drug. Yet I didn’t feel deserving of the title, not then.
    Soon Lisa asked me to come and dance with a group of retired pros in the morning in the Company class. “Stay in the back,” she told me, “and follow. You’ll get it.” I skipped school to make that class, and soon we were rehearsing for festivals as far away as Red Deer. Fantasy ballets. Ukrainian folk dancing—holding the girls by the waist on cue—them grabbing my arm, run here, run there. Jump. Kick. Wait for the applause. Bow. I begged off my parents’ European tour (it was Mom who wanted me along, not Dad) with the excuse of a part-time job, but while they toured Europe, I toured the sun-baked stages at Alberta county fairs. Old ladies and the odd queer stage door Johnny off the farm were my fans. I looked like an honest-to-God dancer.
    My body took to it. My brain. My balance. My thighs thickened, counterbalancing my aching butt. “You’ve got to stretch all the time,” Lisa said, “especially in this heat—take advantage of the heat. You need strength up the back of your legs, too.” My swimmer’s shoulders screamed with each new partner I lifted. My lower back ached. And I couldn’t keep my eyes off myself. I am still obsessed with the potential for beauty, proportion and line.
    Lisa had said I wasn’t too old, and when Madame Défilé, Lisa’s wrinkled, stooping boss and mentor—and a Canadian dance icon whose old-woman perfume scent infused the place—learned I was serious, she challenged me, as if to prove Lisa wrong. “You’re the swimmer,” she said in fading Queen’s English. “Maybe we can make a dancer out of you, but I doubt it.” She would grab my leg at the top of a grand battement and push it higher, shoving her sharp nails into the back of my knee. “Don’t cheat!” She shouted her commands. With her back to me she