Hunting For Love

07

07
Philip

An Ace is a playing card. In the standard deck, the Ace has a single  symbol - a heart, diamond, spade, or club, located in the middle of the card, sometimes large and decorated, especially in the case of the Ace of Spades.

"Plie, Avant en, Attitude!" Mr. Zhilianovski walked amongst us as the piano played in the background. "Gentlemen! Stop looking at the mirror like you're models!" Mr. Zhilianovski is a great teacher, aged and now chubby, he has more experience than most of the teachers and is one of few in this academy. He is more strict than the rest, but he is far from soul-crushing. He strives for perfection a bit more than the rest of the teachers. They are all strict but he's a little bitty more.

"Again!" He clapped his hands and nodded to the pianist.

My movements flowed with a dazzling grace. I felt my soul become one with the music and forged my emotions into my dance. It worked to me like turning back the clock and travelling to a world where the beats of my heart and dancing were the only thing that mattered. 

Mister Zhilianovski rushed to me and fixed my shoulders into position. I remembered all his remarks until now and put them in action. He muttered something, maybe a compliment, but I was too entwined with the music to hear him.

I danced for Mira. Miss Volkova. It suited her.

The choreography looked simple but the moves behind it were much more sophisticated and I think I conceived it well. "Keep it up!" I finally heard when the piano had stopped playing. My heart was pounding almost to the point it was about to explode and breathing was more painful with every gasp. For some reason it felt amazing or the least, rewarding.

We practised the same dance for another ten times until we had a break for water. I haven't touched mine even though I was dying for it. I knew the area around my appendix would hurt after I had drank so I hesitated.

After the four hour rehearsal I was drenched in sweat and my muscles ached to the point where I couldn't walk. I knew that if I took a break I wouldn't be able to continue. The only stop I made was for ice buckets and finally - water. Dancers usually get a bucket filled with ice and dip their legs in it to relieve any pain or stress on the feet. My feet were burning and I had yet to practice my pointe, so I sure made a stop for that.

Abram and the others had left, the lessons were technically over. I put my pointe shoes on. They were in a terrible condition despite the many stitches they had. Since finding pointe shoes is relatively hard, especially for men, the only ones that I found that were my size were pink so I had to repaint them with graffiti spray to black. And since they're pretty expensive, I wear mine for another month which doesn't result well on my feet, knowing that they're meant to be changed every four weeks. They hurt a little more than usual but those are the risks of the profession.

I drank my bottle all in one go. To have some for later, I took some ice from the ice machine and put it in my bottle, waiting for it to eventually melt. Ice cubes were free, thankfully.

Almost another hour was spent at training my pointe. I was completely exhausted and my feet hurt so badly, I felt I couldn't walk myself home. Another old teacher of mine had came in the hall and reminded me that I shouldn't work myself too hard. She was right but if I wanted to practice my pointe I wouldn't have any other day to come here.

It was ten o'clock in the evening already and I had an hour to come home. Mondays were unnecessarily long. I sat on my bench, my feet about to go numb, as I dipped my feet in another ice bucket. I was sure if I had some butter lying around, I could fry eggs on them. My deodorant probably didn't seal the smell of a hundred dead elephants coming from me but I would always shower home.