Waltzing with the Scales

by Louisa Lim Min

All I can see are the grains of rosin clinging on to the shanks of her shoes. Grace is at the front of the line, smothering yellow (and more yellow) onto pink. I watch her bend over as she inspects her pointe shoes, the individual vertebrae from the base of her neck down to the middle of her back yelling out at me as if in mockery. Now she’s back upright and I get distracted again by the outline of ribs peeking out from the white lycra of her costume’s bodice. “Is this enough?” she suddenly asks, raising her eyebrows. “Uh well I…” I must have been staring. She does not wait for my reply, going ahead to knock the base of her shoes onto the floor, peppering the braided hardwood with buttery dust. I want to wish her good luck (no I mean ‘break a leg’) but a flurry of movement from behind as the younger girls rush towards the front cuts the moment short, and she disappears in the commotion.

A sudden peak in the chatter beyond the curtains screams: “You have five minutes more!” As if in reflex, my hands tug at the neckline of my costume, hiking it further up my chest. No, don’t relapse. Stop thinking about it, you’re fine, you’re completely fine. But I see the purple marks staining my waist, insisting to be acknowledged again. My fingers reach down, pinching and twisting at my inner thighs as if doing so will transform me into who I can never be…

The Russian ballerina Polina Semionova. She once said this about the artistic director of the Straatsballett Berlin (Berlin State Ballet) – Vladimir Malakhov: “I think he believed in me more than I believed in myself.” As Ms. Chua, my teacher of fourteen years, comes to stand beside me, I am that little girl at her first ballet class again. My costume, a shimmery-white Romantic tutu, is morphing into the two-piece horror I had on then, which took pride in showcasing just how lavishly my mother always fed me with chicken curries and Teochew-style steamed fish. “Baby, don’t cry, next week you’ll wear the same thing as they all okay?” In her usual mix of Mandarin and English, my mother had tried to comfort me as I clung onto her leg refusing to enter the studio; just a week ago, I was the one clamouring to be let in. In fact, the only reason my outfit was even on me was its colour – baby pink, quite understandably the only redeeming factor to an eight-year-old. Ms. Chua was by the door, her fine black hair pulled back into a low bun, welcoming in my soon-to-be classmates and sharing words with anxious mothers. Suddenly, her eyes were level to mine. I remember them twinkling under the sun as she piped, “Come, Louisa! we’re all going to learn to be butterflies today!” She winked, taking my hand as she stood back up, and I don’t know why but I began to let go.

Something tells me I am backtracking, retreating into the cocoon on my own accord. Ms. Chua is resting a hand on the edge of her significantly rounder hip, bunching up the chiffon of one of her many autumn-themed wrap skirts. I remember being excited before every class, not just because I got to dance, but because I wanted to see what other flowery skirts she would wear next. They were always mesmerising, swinging with every sautés and jetés as if they had a mind of their own. The fluttering stopped as the years passed us by and she gradually turned to me for demonstrations instead. She would never tell us until many years later that it was because her hip and right knee had started to bother her. Sometimes I forget that as I grow up, they get older too. “What if my feet fail me?” I finally ask, even though what I really want to know is whether she has ever thought I was fat. She sighs for a moment, then laughs, “Don’t be silly, you’ll be fine. You and the other soloists have worked so hard for this, you’ll be great!” “But…” As her thin eyebrows soften and the deep lines on her forehead crinkle even further, she shakes her head and gives me a light push. “Go warm up.”

Semionova went on to tour as Malakhov’s partner, eventually becoming the youngest principal dancer of the company. She was only eighteen, a powerful yet svelte master of an “un-master-able” art form, touring the world to dance lead roles in famous ballets like The Nutcracker and La Bayadère. I am twenty-two, and this is my first ballet recital. While she embodies the ultimate ballet archetype, like how Grace, with her thin build and dainty face, could have also been a professional if she’d only wanted to, I’m the complete opposite. Grace’s name itself already has her set for the path I could never tread. Four minutes before the curtains open and my mind is wandering again.

I must have been eleven when I first learnt that I could never be a professional ballerina. We were queueing to receive our end-term reports from Ms. Chua, her forest-green unitard and matching skirt hanging loosely off her body, her face bearing no traces of what would hit her in years to come. As my classmates at the front fussed over their reports, I told myself to wait patiently for my turn. After all, what was the worse that could happen? No tick under the ‘Excellent’ box for ‘Posture’? Looking back now, I wonder if this was where it all began: The constant anxiety accompanying every meal when all my tastebuds wanted was a sip of the forbidden, but one thousand and two hundred calories was the daily limit I had set myself to reach forty-five kg in two months (Stupid, really). Eleven-year-old me would be scoffing at the idea of giving up food for beauty, but eleven-year-old me would also not understand the euphoria that came with the twisting and knotting of my stomach when it was a good day. I had an excellent day once; I hit only eight hundred calories.

I remember my chest pumping away as the remnants of the Grande Allegro exercise continued breathing in my limbs. It was always my favourite part of class, working on our big jumps – the quintessential grande jetés, commonly known as split leaps, and also pas de chats, a sideways movement directly translating to ‘step of the cat.’ “Turn out your knees! Jump higher! Make sure you land in a proper fifth!” Ms. Chua’s voice continued to echo in my ears and soon, it was me at the front of the line, chubby little hands clutching the report.

Grade Five. Posture: ‘Excellent’ (phew!). Turn-out: ‘Very good’… Oh look, Ms. Chua wrote more things here! I scrambled to process the words swimming in front of my eyes. ‘Louisa might not have the natural physical attributes needed for ballet, but her quick mind and hard-working personality will see her go further than one without these traits.’

“What do you think she means, Mummy?” I asked my mother later that Saturday evening as I plopped onto the sofa with a strawberry-glazed doughnut in my other hand. My father intercepted before she could even take a glance. “Let Daddy see,” he said gruffly, turning away from the blaring furore emitting from the television. It wasn’t like him to ignore football, especially not a crucial match between Liverpool and Manchester United. “Oh, aiyah, your teacher is complimenting your sharp brain lah!” He let out a short guffaw before thrusting the report back to me, returning his gaze to the screen. “Must be why we named you 林敏,” he added, chuckling (homonym for ‘quick-minded’ in Mandarin Chinese: 灵敏). My mother joined in the chortling as she turned her back against me and returned to ironing. The next week during class, I couldn’t help but notice the jutting collar bones of my classmates. They looked pretty.

My legs bring me to the dressing room even though we only have about three minutes to show. It is cluttered; clothes and costumes are strewn all over and open palettes are left to stew in the stagnant room air. Spying a rare bobby pin peeking from underneath a pack of wet wipes, I stick it straight into my bun. You look beautiful, I whisper, glaring at the girl glaring right back at me.

Forget the times you were supposed to keep your eyeline up at the barre but instead watched Grace from the corner of your left eye and craved her tiny waist. Forget the times you waited in the corner for your turn at the pirouette enchaînement exercise, where rather than practising your spotting technique, you wondered if your body jiggled like how theirs sometimes did, or if yours jiggled even more. Forget having to stand in front of the mirror again in this exact costume, your own mother pointing out every single bit that is wrong with your body, like you haven’t already picked yourself to shreds. Her lament still rings clear in my head. “Girl ah, if only you can give me some of your meat hor?” she had sighed, staring wistfully, first at my over-developed thighs, then at her own legs. I agreed with her (I still do) but I argued anyway, “I need muscles to dance what.” “Girl, it’s for your own good,” she continued, “Where got ballerina fat-fat one, you tell me?” Yes, Mummy, there is. Me.

My gaze drops to my chest, down my torso and along the top of my legs before arriving at my shoes. The satiny finish of my Grishko pointe shoes has faded into a calamine pink, adorned with dark streaks on the platforms courtesy of the studio’s never-cleaned floor. I rise up onto pointe, rolling through each individual foot slowly. As the taut fabric hugs my arches in its usual embrace, it reminds me of how the numbers on the scales always invited me into their arms, pulling me in day after day, hour after hour, promising great things – great things I should never even yearn for. The ache at the tip of my toes crawls into my toenails and the twinge of my right bunion causes me to shudder for a second. I look up again, but I don’t just see me anymore; I see Ms. Chua too.

She is down on both knees during our first pointe class, one hand cradling the front of my ankles and the other behind my arches as she guides my feet until I am completely over the box of my pointe shoes. “This is how it should feel when you’re correctly en pointe!” she beams, wiping her hands on the back of her skirt and going ahead to help the other girls. Meanwhile, I fall off pointe immediately with a dramatic groan only a fifteen-year-old can muster. She is holding up her arm for me a year later as I attempt my first chaîné pirouettes en pointe down the diagonale. Ever so often, I lurch into her with what can be considered the force of an elephant slipping on mud, and yet she remains unnaturally steady. She is sighing as she brushes a gel-filled comb through my hair, easing stubborn flyaway strands into a perfect bun. While I can whip up a bun by myself in mere seconds, examinations and performances are a whole different arena. As she quips about how terribly dependent we all are on her to do our hair properly, I hear myself laugh: “Because you do it best!” She snorts in response but I catch that same twinkle that has never left her eyes anyway. The dressing room is cluttered and I leave it as it is.

Two minutes to go and the silence backstage is deafening. I suddenly feel it in my throat. A part of me wants to rip off the floral headpiece so tightly pinned onto the crown of my head, and my costume; it breathes with every breath I take. A part of me just wants to quit. It’s too hard. I’m not ready. I’m too fat. I creep behind the curtains, opening it slightly to sneak a final peek at the audience. Full house. I see my family in the front row. My mother is on the edge of her seat, saying something to my father beside her, who somehow manages to catch my eye. He explodes into the widest smile, mouthing ‘Good luck!’ and quickly taps my mother and brother on their legs too. They both turn and spot me within seconds; my mother starts waving excitedly and my brother gives me the thumbs up. I want to close the curtains but I wave back.

A sudden memory jolts me awake. My mother used to tell me how much she has always loved to dance, even though she never got the opportunity to attend formal lessons. It was only a couple of weeks back, at about eleven p.m. when I walked into her bedroom and she had the radio turned on at full volume. Clad in just her nightie and a red hairband keeping her wispy strands out of her face, she simply let the music move her. I remember watching her from the door, unable to keep my eyes off the sheer delight that was lighting up her face. She swayed her non-existent hips with such finesse, her stick-thin arms flowing with every cadence of the melody. She didn’t care about how she looked, but she looked perfect. “Why are you standing there, aiyoh!” my mother caught sight of me and laughed, not missing a beat as her feet skipped along the parquet floor as if she is half her age. “Mummy anyhow one lah, come and join me?”

One minute. We hurry to standby at the wings upstage left. “Break a leg, Lou.” I hear a whisper; It’s Grace. “You’ll be great!” she continues, tugging at my right sleeve and pulling out a portion which has gotten stuck underneath the strap, “As you always are.” I can hear our breaths starting to sync, quickening as the seconds pass us by. A lump rises up my throat as I look at her again, but this time I will not be distracted. I don’t have to dance like Polina Semionova, I need only dance like Mummy.

Thirty seconds. Ms. Chua is addressing the audience now. Something something first studio recital… something something Les Sylphides… Fifteen. She returns backstage and stands by the second wing, both hands clasped in front of her mouth as if in prayer. Ten. It suddenly hits me that I haven’t gotten round to putting rosin on my pointe shoes, nor have I remembered to hike up the waistband of my unforgiving tights. Shit! No. No, it’s okay, it doesn’t matter. You’re fine. Five. The curtains open. Zero.

We run out onstage.