@@CHAP@@ Chapter 1
Madame Natalya rapped out the rhythm with a cane she always kept near her to point to something, like one of the girls who had danced particularly well or poorly. The dreaded cane. She had a severe, pale, very white face with jet-black hair pulled tightly back in a bun and eyes that saw everything. She was rail thin and wore a black leotard and her pink satin toe shoes to class. She was ageless. No one knew how old she was. She had come to Ukraine twenty years before, when she retired as the ballet master of the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow. The authorities and the Ministry of the Arts wanted an equally excellent ballet school in Ukraine, and so she came from Moscow “on a broomstick,” the girls liked to whisper. They hated her until they danced with other companies and realized how well trained they were, and then they came back to visit her and thank her. She liked seeing her old students and was warmer to them after they graduated.
The senior class was made up of young men and women who performed with the Grand Kyiv Ballet and still attended dance classes daily, as well as rehearsals when they were performing. Their entire lives centered around and were consumed by the ballet.
Madame Natalya was merciless. She saw every leap, every step, every mistake, every flaw, every breath, and pounded her cane harder, as the man at the piano played the pieces she had selected. Swan Lake was her favorite, as all her students knew.
“Higher!” she said to Vlad as he leapt across the room. He had come from Moscow to study with her. His mother was a prima ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet and had also studied with Madame Natalya when she was a student. She wanted her son trained by the same relentless teacher who had taught her so well, so she had sent Vlad to the ballet school in Kyiv. Vlad’s mother was Russian and his father Ukrainian. Vlad liked living in Ukraine, although he would go back to Moscow soon, when Madame Natalya thought he was ready for the Bolshoi Ballet’s high standards. She always said he didn’t leap high enough. She wanted him to soar like a bird, as though he had wings. He was seventeen, and tomorrow he would turn eighteen. He was a beautiful boy with straight blond hair almost to his shoulders, high cheekbones, and green eyes. His father was one of the choreographers of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. Vlad had been dancing since he was three, as they all had. The students stopped attending academic school when they were twelve or thirteen, and were tutored every morning. After they finished their lessons and completed their assignments, they had half an hour to eat lunch, and then they had class all afternoon, followed by rehearsal, and evening performances if they were currently dancing with the Grand Kyiv Ballet.
Vlad was born in Kyiv, and lived in Moscow with his parents until they sent him back to Kyiv when he was eight, and he lived in the ballet school dormitory, as many of the students did. Vlad’s parents visited him when they had time, which wasn’t often. The performance schedules were intense in Moscow.
Vlad’s favorite dance partner was Tatyanna, the girl he had been in love with since he was fifteen. She was already eighteen and lived in the women’s dormitory. She had come to the school from an orphanage, where an astute teacher had guessed her talent early on. Of all the young women in the senior class, Tatyanna was the most talented and the most graceful. Vlad felt as though he could do anything when he danced with her. Dancing with her was magical and made him stronger. They were an exquisite pair. She was blonde like Vlad, with delicate features and blue eyes. She was Ukrainian and her parents had died in an accident when she was two and so she went to the orphanage. At four, she became the youngest student ever to be sent to live at the ballet school. The government paid for her training. She had already toured with the Grand Kyiv Ballet three times, once to Warsaw, once to Vienna, and once to Paris. She floated across the studio with infinite precision as Madame Natalya nodded, watching her.