Bunheads by Sophie Flack Page B

and smiles. I’m caught off guard and have an embarrassing coughing fit. Zoe giggles prettily and then swoons as he introduces himself in his charming Australian accent.
    “I watched one of your performances this past fall,” Jason says, “and it got me really excited to work with you guys. What a strong group of dancers. I thought I’d play the music for you first and then teach you some phrases I’ve been working on.”
    Zoe’s tongue is practically hanging out of her mouth as Jasonwalks to the stereo and puts on a CD. The music is a scherzo from one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas; it’s bright and fast.
    He nods along with the beat, and after a few moments he asks us to spread out in the studio. The movements he begins to teach us feel more like modern dance than classical ballet. “Can you move your weight down?” he asks Zoe, who bats her eyelashes at him. “I want you to feel connected to the floor.”
    Some of the movements he teaches us resemble African dance: We isolate our ribs, quake our pelvises, and buckle our knees. Some movements are sharp and quick, while others are languid. At first I feel pretty stupid and self-conscious trying to mimic him, but after a while the dance begins to feel liberating. I’ve never moved like this before, and I like it. We’re not pulling up and turning out as if trying to defy gravity, the way we do in ballet. We even get down on the ground!
    Above us, Jason is smiling and nodding his head. “Yes, you,” Jason calls out, pointing to me. “You’re feeling it, I can tell.”
    When rehearsal is over, Zoe comes to my side, panting. A stray piece of blond hair is stuck to her cheek with sweat. “I thought I liked him, but maybe I don’t,” she whispers. “Those last five minutes with the weird hand gestures? What was that all about?”
    “Oh, you’re just jealous because he said I was feeling it,” I tease.
    Zoe sniffs. “All I can say is I would never date a modern dancer. I just wouldn’t be able to respect a person who devoted his life to rolling around on the floor.”
    “Hey, at least it’s not
The Nutcracker
.” We head down to theGreen Room, where we change into costumes for our dress rehearsal.
    Onstage, Otto perches atop a stool and motions us into our places for
Violin Concerto in D
, which we will perform tonight. The corps in this ballet—there are sixteen of us, in belted leotards—pose in horizontal rows while Mai Morimoto throws herself into high jump after incredibly high jump on center stage. Almost imperceptibly, Otto nods his approval as Mai does a crazy layout. Her jet-black hair slips out of its bun and seems to almost float in the air.
    Zoe and I are doing a series of poses in the back, and we happen to be next to each other at this point in this ballet. We’ve danced
Violin
so many times that we can carry on a conversation between steps, though we try to keep our lips still, like ventriloquists, so we don’t get yelled at.
    “Whoa, did you see that? Mai is fearless,” I murmur through my clenched teeth.
    “Shut up, I’m concentrating,” Zoe teases. “Han, wouldn’t it be awesome if we were cast in the duet in
Temperaments
? I’m mad for that part,” she whispers.
    We lunge away from each other and then piqué back together again.
    “You know that Emma understudied the duet last year,” she whispers, “but she’s still out, and Leah’s gained so much weight that I doubt they’d ask her to learn it.”
    Since
Temperaments
is coming up in a few weeks, we’ll start rehearsing it soon. We switch our weight, then piqué into an attitude and pose in B-plus.
    “I mean, I would so much rather do classical than Jason’s weird modern stuff,” Zoe says, posing with her arms jutting forward.
    “Oh, loosen up,” I whisper. On the count of six, we kneel with our heads down, and Zoe and I are practically touching. (Conveniently, this makes it easier to talk.)
    “Listen to you,” she says. “Ms. Goody Two-shoes, you’re one